"In 1961, Helen Andelin, a disillusioned housewife and mother of eight, languished in a lackluster, twenty-year old marriage. A religious woman, she spent long periods in fasting and prayer asking for help to improve her marriage. While studying a set of women's advice booklets from the 1920s, Andelin had an epiphany that not only changed her life but also affected the lives of millions of American women. She applied the principles from the booklets to her unhappy marriage and found that her difficult and disinterested husband became loving and attentive. He bought her gifts and hurried home from the office to be with her. Their marriage was revitalized. Andelin took her new-found happiness as a sign that God wanted her to share these principles with other women and began teaching classes at her church. The results were dramatic. In 1963, at the urging of her followers, Andelin wrote and self-published Fascinating Womanhood. The book, taken almost word for word from those 1920s advice booklets, sold hundreds of thousands of copies and launched a nationwide organization of classes and seminars led by thousands of volunteer teachers. Countering second-wave feminists in the 1960s, Andelin preached family values and traditional gender roles for women"--

Examines the life and influence on American society of Helen Andelin, who after revitalising her marriage through the application of principles from womens advice booklets of the 1920s, becam an advocate for traditional family values during the turbulent post-war decades. Andelin spoke to millions of women during a time of social unrest. Her message calling for the return to traditional roles seemed to appeal to them during a time of uncertainty and radical social change.