Description

First time in paperback, this unique biography and cultural history is based on History extensive research and interviews with more than one hundred witnesses from the period. Acclaimed novelist and playwright Susan Dworkin skillfully interweaves the absorbing first-person account of how Bess Myerson became the country’s first, and still only, Jewish Miss America in the same year that World War II ended, with a fresh portrait of what life was like for women and Jews in America in the 1930s and ’40s. Her tale of one girl’s coming of age in prefeminist America is “poignant and appealing . . . as much a cameo of an era as a work of biography.” —ALA Booklist

About the Author

Acclaimed writer Susan Dworkin is the author of many books, including the memoir The Nazi Officer’s Wife with Edith Hahn Beer, the novel Stolen Goods, the novel-musical The Book of Candy, the self-help book The Ms. Guide to a Woman’s Health with Dr. Cynthia W. Cooke, and the film studies Making Tootsie and Double De Palma. She wrote the Peabody Award-winning TV documentary She's Nobody’s Baby: American Women in the 20th Century and was a longtime contributing editor to Ms. Magazine. She lives in New Jersey.

Bess Myerson now devotes her time mainly to advocacy in the area of women’s health research and treatment, consumerism, education, and peace in the Middle East. She is on the National Advisory Board of the State of Israel Bonds, a member of the “Share” Board and a trained facilitator working with ovarian cancer survivors, and one of the founders of the Museum of Jewish Heritage. She lives in New York City.