Rating: 
Summary: Better than network television!
Review: Elizabeth Wurtzel's "Bitch" is the Spice Girls cover of Clarissa Pinkola Estes's "Women Who Run With the Wolves."[Baseline calculation: 50 books/year x 50 years = 2500 books.] While spending 0.04% of my reading effort on "Bitch" might not sound like an absolute waste of time, I got more sheer enjoyment from Shakespeare's "Troilus and Cressida."
Rating: 
Summary: Scary stuff
Review: Incoherent and self-obsessed. Who'd buy it, other than for the sexy cover?
Rating:
Summary: Garbage
Review: As always Ms. Wurtzell is more hype than substance
Rating: 
Summary: Lucky "Bitch"
Review: Sad, depressed, product of a broken home (luckily, it would seem) graduate of Harvard, music critic for national publications, professional drug abuser - Ms. Wurtzel certainly likes to push the envelope of our indulgence and toleration. So she's back with a book that, again, is more or less about her and her feelings and opinions and, according to Newsweek, struggling her way out of rehab - this time for "speed". As a great fan of Wurtzel's midriff (cover of "Prozac Nation") I'll certainly buy this one for the bare-breast cover! Oh well, great marketing is great marketing...
Rating:
Summary: Disappointing, pseudo-feminism
Review: I started reading this book soon after I had finished Susan Faludi's "Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women". I was looking forward to reading Wurtzel's book as a representative woman of'90s post-backlash era where women are allowed to be independent and make their own choices AND say what they want about it. Unfortunately, Wurtzel has once again set us back, again to the '80s, where women are allowed to be independent as long as they suffer the consequences of failed love relationships, success based only on their looks, and empty rebellion for the sake of rebellion. Wurtzel, using a handful of notororious examples including herself, argues that there is something inherent about women that makes them self-destructive, usually in the name of a man. Furthermore, Wurtzel seems to lack adequate knowledge about the psychology of women, using Carol Gilligan, a little respected '70s "feminist" psychologist, as her only scholarly-based evidence on the problems faced by adolescent girls. Instead of discussing empirically-based findings on the social problems that still plague women today, she resorts to personality and psychodynamic based explanations about why there are so many women who are screwed up. It seems that she's been to too many unhelpful therapy sessions and has now used herself as a basis of generalizing to an entire generation of women...unfair and just as bad as prevailing traditional stereotypes about good, little women.
Rating:
Summary: Funny and Insightful
Review: Elizabeth Wurtzel illuminates the multi-faceted, often maddening but always enlightening personality of the modern woman. I picked this one up right after reading Naomi Wolf's much more academic "The Beauty Myth," and found myself devouring it in large chunks. Much of this can be attributed to Wurtzel's unfailing ability to weave a sardonic sense of humor with some piercing insights on women and their rather confusing place in American modern culture. She writes like a woman with little time to spare, and it will keep you glued to the page. Her chapter on Hillary Clinton, which includes some controversial but agreeable theories on the role of the First Lady, is a standout. Read this book if you want to understand what it's like to be a young woman in America - nay, the world - today. It'll get you thinking, even when you're ready to throw your hands in the air in exhaustion.
Rating: 
Summary: The start of all Wurtzel reading, not Prozac Nation....
Review: This book is an astounding slap in the face to traditional thinking, media feedback, and definitely one to stock up on to hand out as gifts to your evolving friends. "Used to Love her but had to Kill her," the great chapter mainly about Nicole Brown Simpson. A great starting point in the book. Elizabeth writes she knew OJ killed Nicole because she had this QUALITY, this rare and fine beauty that would drive a person to think if they couldn't have this, or if they lost this, no one else would be seen replacing them. I wonder what Wurtzel would say about Amber Frey et. al. From there I finish the book, I buy my friend's copies, I buy Radical Sanity, Prozac Nation, More, Now Again. I start reading Radical, it's so right on target, I have to lend it to a friend before I finish. I start More Now again, it's a gift. But I digress. This is the heart of her writing, this book, I think. I thought she was manic reading it, then More Now tells she was tuned way up. Made no difference to me. Her thinking, even manic and circuitous makes sense! Is there hope for us all?
Rating:
Summary: Pick It Up and Read Now!!
Review: Ms. Wurtzel has once again written a very formidable book. Oh yes, she still rambles but her ramblings are full of purpose and signify a lot. When I first picked up this book, I thought I'd be reading about tough women who were artists, CEOs or just plain bad-azzes. Nothing like that. The main theme running throughout the book is that a woman needs to be a bitch so as not to be abused by the world - and men are the central characters who are abusive in her world. She gives lots of examples of women who were not bitches or deluded bitches. She mentions Amy Fischer, Courtney Love, spends a good number of pages on Nicole Simpson and the pas a deux of abusive relationships. The pas a deux is the balancing act between a woman and her abuser. She takes one step forward he hits her; she leaves; he begs her to come back, she does and the play is re-enacted over and over again. Such was the life of Nicole Simpson, who, although beautiful and rich, re-enacted this drama over and over with O.J. Simpson.
She also mentions Amy Fischer a good number of times and has a lot of sympathy for her. She describes Fischer as all adolescent hormones choosing a funky looking man with whom to have an affair. She rants about the fact that Joey Boutaffuco earned less prison time than Fischer. Well . . .Fischer did shoot his wife in the face, although it was likely prodded on by the husband.
Wurtzel is also honestly brutal with herself. She acknowledges her addictions, her keeping vigil hoping a guy would call, crying herself to sleep after break ups. She wants the wedding and all that it entails BUT she likes being alone. She actually likes going to a restaurant or to the movies by herself. She enjoys exploring all of New York on her own.
Wurtzel also mentions Anne Sexton and Sylvia Plath a lot. She mentions Sexton in light of her poetry but Plath's main feature seems to have been her suicide, supposedly over an affair in which her husband engaged.
She mentions Hillary Clinton and believes that the reason why she was hated so much was because she essentially became a co-president, a position which was not sanctioned by the public or created by congress. She was not earning her own keep, so to say. Her position was that similar to Ivana Trump's. Ivana ran all of Trump's casinos but, because she was not paid, she was not taken seriously by her husband (or the public) for all the work she did. Hillary, in people's mind, was trying to re-organize health care because of the largesse of her husband. Wurtzel questions whether Hillary should have had a "real" job that paid her commensurate with her abilities.
I really recommend this book. This is the second of her books that I've read and I'm looking forward to digging more out from the library. She writes with such candor and every word means something. She rambles a bit but even her ramblings are rife with good observations
Rating:
Summary: Title is misleading-- it's NOT a men bashing book.
Review: This book was surprisingly scholarly book with lots of historical references, written by Harvard graduate (friend of Mira Sorvino).
I had many new realizations of the world and this book has changed me profoundly.
Rating: 
Summary: Self-justification masking as feminism
Review: I tried to read this book twice and couldn't finish it. It is very bad, and the sentences are long and confusing, and Elizabeth Wurtzel has no direction in the book. Try 'Prozac Nation', but even that is not much better.
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