Unfinished Business: Pressure Points in the Lives of Women

by Maggie Scarf

In detailed, revealing portraits of women from their teens through their sixties, Maggie Scarf explores the core experiences of women’s lives and discovers what can happen when the days and years scurry by, leaving unfinished the tasks that transform us from child to girl to woman.

Genres: Psychology, Nonfiction, Feminism, Womens

623 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1980

About the author

Maggie Scarf is a former visiting fellow at the Whitney Humanities Center, Yale University, and a current fellow of Jonathan Edwards College, Yale University. She was for many years a Contributing Editor to The New Republic and a member of the advisory board of the American Psychiatric Press.

Maggie Scarf is the author of six books for adults, including the acclaimed New York Times bestsellers Unfinished Business: Pressure Points in the Lives of Women and Intimate Partners: Patterns in Love and Marriage. Her other books include: Body, Mind, Behavior (a collection of essays, most of them first published in The New York Times Magazine); Intimate Worlds: How Families Thrive and Why They Fail; Secrets, Lies, Betrayal: How the Body Holds the Secrets of a Life, and How to Unlock Them; and, most recently, September Songs: The Bonus Years of Marriage. She is also the author of two books for children. Her works have been published in British, Canadian, German, Hebrew, Dutch, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, French and Swedish editions.

Ms. Scarf is the recipient of numerous awards and fellowships, including a Ford Foundation Fellowship and a Nieman Fellowship in Journalism at Harvard. She has received several National Media Awards from the American Psychological Foundation, including the first prize. During the recent past, Ms. Scarf has served on the National Commission on Women and Depression, has been the recipient of a Certificate of Appreciation from the Connecticut Psychological Association, and also received The Connecticut United Nations Award, which cited her as an Outstanding Connecticut Woman. In 1997, she was awarded a Special Certificate of Commendation from the American Psychiatric Association for an article on patient confidentiality (“Keeping Secrets”), which was published in The New York Times Magazine.

She has appeared on many television programs, including Oprah, Today Show, Good Morning America, CBS News, and CNN, and has been interviewed extensively on radio and for magazines and newspapers across the nation. She currently blogs for Psychology Today.

Maggie Scarf lives in Connecticut with her husband Herb, the Sterling Professor of Economics at Yale, and is the mother of three adult daughters.

Reviews

[Maggie · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is an interesting series of interviews done about depression in women at different age groups. I didn't quite finish the book because it is kind of a downer.

[Montana-IFC · Rating 5 out of 5]

Public libraries challenge-Retained, 1989