Friedan chronicles the secret underground of women in Washington in the early sixties who drafted her to spearhead an "NAACP" for women, and the courage of many who spoke out against discrimination for the first time. She recounts the political in-fighting and dirty tricks within the movement and how hard she fought to keep the movement practical and free of extremism, including "man hating." Friedan is frank about her twenty-two-year marriage to an advertising entrepreneur, which deteriorated into physical abuse.
Forthright, full of stories and larger-than-life characters, it is, however, the scope of Friedan's vision and achievements that makes her memoir so important and compelling. In Life So Far, Friedan spares neither herself nor anyone else.