Author Guide · Feminist Nonfiction
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In 1986 a study on marriage made headlines across America: a college-educated woman still single at 30, it claimed, had about a 20 percent chance of ever marrying, and by 35 only 5 percent. Susan Faludi, then a young newspaper reporter, wondered why almost nobody checked whether it was true. It turned out to be flawed, and her questions grew into Backlash (1991), a bestseller that won the National Book Critics Circle Award. The same year she won a Pulitzer Prize for a Wall Street Journal report on the human cost of the Safeway buyout. Since then she has written about American men, about the country after 9/11, and about her own father. This guide covers her four key books, in order, and where to begin.
By Lisanne Swart · 4 key books · 1991–2016 · Updated October 2026
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Quick answer
Susan Faludi has written four books: Backlash (1991), Stiffed (1999), The Terror Dream (2007) and In the Darkroom (2016). Start with Backlash, the book that made her name; In the Darkroom, about her father, is the one that won the Kirkus Prize and was a Pulitzer finalist.
Where to Start with Susan Faludi
If you want her defining book
→ Backlash (1991) — the 1991 investigation of the media’s turn against feminism.
If you want memoir and family history
→ In the Darkroom (2016) — her search for her father in Budapest.
If you want her reporting on men
→ Stiffed (1999) — shipyard workers, cadets and Promise Keepers.
If you want politics and the media after 9/11
→ The Terror Dream (2007).
4 Susan Faludi Books, in Order
Backlash
Faludi argues that the 1980s brought a counter-assault on women’s rights, carried by the media, Hollywood, advertising and politics. She takes apart the 1986 “marriage crunch” study and the reports of working women leaving their jobs in droves and suffering epidemic burnout, and documents the films and advertising of the decade. It became a bestseller and won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction.
Stiffed
Her second book turns to men. It opens in the shipyards of Long Beach, California, and ends on Hollywood pornographic film sets, with laid-off workers, cadets at the Citadel, Promise Keepers, gang members and a long section on Sylvester Stallone along the way. Faludi argues that American men lost the roles that once defined them, such as providing and serving, and were offered consumer culture in their place.
The Terror Dream
An analysis of how American media and politics responded to 11 September 2001 by reviving old roles: protective men and women in need of rescue. She looks at the treatment of 9/11 widows and the story of Private Jessica Lynch’s rescue in Iraq, then traces the pattern back to colonial captivity narratives. Reviews were sharply divided.
In the Darkroom
In 2004, after about two decades of estrangement, Faludi received an email from her father, a photographer and Holocaust survivor living in Budapest, signed “Love from your parent, Stefánie”: at 76, her father had had gender reassignment surgery. The book follows her years of visits to Hungary and her father’s past as a Jewish teenager in wartime Budapest. It won the 2016 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.
In What Order to Read Susan Faludi
The four books stand alone, so you can read them in any order. Read in publication order, they make a sequence: Backlash on women, Stiffed on men, The Terror Dream on what happened to both after 9/11, and In the Darkroom on how one person crossed between them.
Backlash and Stiffed are long books built from statistics and interviews; In the Darkroom is a personal narrative. If you want a shorter way in, start with In the Darkroom and go back to Backlash afterwards.
A reading path
1. Backlash (1991)
2. Stiffed (1999)
3. The Terror Dream (2007)
4. In the Darkroom (2016)
The years · 1959–2016
Quick facts about Susan Faludi
- Known for
- Susan Faludi is known for documenting how the American media and culture turned against feminism in the 1980s, and for reporting on gender in American life.
- 1959
- Born in Queens, New York
- 1981
- Graduates from Harvard
- 1991
- Backlash and a Pulitzer Prize
- 1999
- Stiffed
- 2007
- The Terror Dream
- 2016
- In the Darkroom, Kirkus Prize
- Born
- 18 April 1959, Queens, New York; grew up in Yorktown Heights
- Education
- Harvard University, BA in history and literature, 1981; managing editor of The Harvard Crimson
- Newspapers
- Miami Herald, Atlanta Constitution, San Jose Mercury News, The Wall Street Journal
- Pulitzer Prize
- Explanatory Journalism, 1991, for a Wall Street Journal report on the Safeway leveraged buyout
- Book prizes
- National Book Critics Circle Award (Backlash); Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction 2016 (In the Darkroom)
- Married
- The writer Russ Rymer
- Citizenship
- United States and Hungary
The red mark is 1991: Backlash, the year she also won the Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism.
How Susan Faludi Writes: Checking the Story Everyone Repeats
Faludi’s books often start with a claim that everyone repeated and nobody checked. Backlash grew from the 1986 marriage study; as she later put it, what struck her was “that there was so little interest in finding out whether the study was true or false.” Much of the book follows the numbers behind headlines about burnout, depression and women leaving work.
She is a newspaper reporter by training, and her books are long and heavily documented. Stiffed was built from years of interviews with men, from shipyard workers in Long Beach to cadets at the Citadel. The Terror Dream reads news coverage, talk shows and comic books alongside colonial history.
In the Darkroom uses the same method on her own family. Faludi reports on her father the way she reported on the Safeway buyout, with interviews, records and repeated visits, and she writes herself into the story as the reporter. The book is also an investigation of Hungarian history and of how identity is made.
Frequently asked questions about Susan Faludi’s books
How many books has Susan Faludi written?
Four: Backlash (1991), Stiffed (1999), The Terror Dream (2007) and In the Darkroom (2016). She also writes essays and journalism for publications including The New York Times and The New York Review of Books.
What are Susan Faludi’s books in order?
Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women (1991), Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man (1999), The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America (2007) and In the Darkroom (2016).
Where should I start with Susan Faludi?
With Backlash (1991), the book that made her name. If you would rather start with a personal story, read In the Darkroom (2016), about her father.
What is Susan Faludi’s most famous book?
Backlash (1991). It was a bestseller, won the National Book Critics Circle Award for nonfiction and is widely read as a classic feminist text.
What did Susan Faludi win the Pulitzer Prize for?
The 1991 Pulitzer Prize for Explanatory Journalism, for a Wall Street Journal report on the leveraged buyout of the Safeway supermarket chain. The committee cited its picture of the “human costs of high finance.”
What is In the Darkroom about?
Faludi’s father, a photographer and Holocaust survivor who lived in Budapest. In 2004, after about twenty years of estrangement, an email from her father announced gender reassignment surgery and a new name, Stefánie. The book follows Faludi’s visits to Hungary and her father’s past. Stefánie Faludi died in 2015.
Did In the Darkroom win any prizes?
It won the 2016 Kirkus Prize for Nonfiction and was a finalist for the 2017 Pulitzer Prize for Biography.
Why was The Terror Dream criticised?
Reviews were sharply divided. Michiko Kakutani in The New York Times called it “tendentious, self-important, sloppily reasoned”, and Sarah Churchwell in The Guardian, while calling it a persuasive analysis of post-9/11 sexism, said Faludi was “guilty of her own exaggerations and mythmaking.”
Is Stiffed a follow-up to Backlash?
Not directly, but it is often read as its companion. After writing about women in Backlash, Faludi spent years interviewing American men about work, fatherhood and masculinity for Stiffed (1999).
Is Susan Faludi still alive?
Yes. She was born on 18 April 1959 in Queens, New York, and is married to the writer Russ Rymer.
Footnotes
- Susan Faludi — Wikipedia
- Faludi, Susan 1959– — Encyclopedia.com
- In ‘The Darkroom’, a writer comes to grips with her dad’s gender transition — NPR, 2016
- In the Darkroom — Bowdoin Books
- The Terror Dream — Kirkus Reviews, 2007
- Stiffed — The Austin Chronicle
Bibliography last verified 9 October 2026. Where sources give different first-publication years, this page uses the year in library catalogues or the publisher’s own record.
This list was not put together by a machine.
The notes are all mine,
and the books are all his.
Lisanne x
Written by Lisanne Swart, who has curated reading lists and author guides at lisanneswart.com since 2021.
See more on her personal bookshelf.
“In the summer of 2004 I set out to investigate someone I scarcely knew, my father.”
— Susan Faludi, In the Darkroom (2016), the first line
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