Book Reviews

An Unexpected Life: A Memoir
Gloria Steinem
September 22, 2026
ISBN-13: 9780593978177

Contact: Lily Soroka, lsoroka@penguinrandomhouse.com. Publicity, Random House Publishing Group 

Reviewed by Edith G. Tolchin (edietolchin.com/book-reviews); EGT@edietolchin.com

“Whether we are related by blood or by ideas. . . we are all passengers on Spaceship Earth.” 

Ms. Steinem has lived in the same brownstone for more than fifty years. Her dream is to ultimately acquire the entire building to help women in need. She was one of the co-founders of second-wave feminism.

Her parents divorced, and Mom became Toledo’s “Crazy Lady,” who coped by using tranquilizers. Poverty was strong and Steinem was once bitten by a rat.

Young Steinem was a voracious reader of library books, shelf-by-shelf. After graduating Smith College, she studied in India. For modest income, she wrote essays for Indian media. While at college, she was asked her typing speed—as was this reviewer—as it was assumed female grads would become secretaries.

Back in the USA, she wrote for New York magazine. Steinem observed, “The perpetuation of racial caste is inseparable from that of sexual caste, yet this is not conventional wisdom.”

Steinem and friends of all races began speaking about the women’s movement. She did political interviews. She contrasted James Baldwin as “pure authenticity,” while Andy Warhol was a “spectacular fake.”

She went undercover as a “Bunny” at Hugh Hefner’s Playboy Club for an article in Show; repulsive Hefner tried, unsuccessfully, to sue.

Steinem has been enamored by Native American cultures and women’s equality within those groups. There were twenty-five women experts in the first class of astronauts in the 1950s—however it wasn’t until 1983 when Sally Ride was named the “first female astronaut.” Steinem asks, “How many women have been nurturing men’s careers without getting credit?”

Then, “The adversaries of love between two men or two women and the adversaries of equality for women are often the same people.” Obvious.

Steinem started New York (magazine) in 1968, which eventually allowed her to “write about everything from the first neighborhood gay bars to late-night discos.” And Ms., the first magazine “that was edited, owned, and controlled by women” was birthed in 1972.

She feels roles should be shared. “No one, male or female, can have it all if we have to do it all.” Steinem shares life lessons she feels may be helpful to the reader.

CONCLUSION:

An Unexpected Life: A Memoir, by Gloria Steinem, is a gift through which everyone can—and should—appreciate Ms. Steinem’s understanding of humanity. “Each of us must be heard if we are to be part of the human family.”