Susan Faludi was a Pulitzer prize-winning reporter who, in the 1990s, walked away from daily deadlines to become a big-time feminist interpreter of American life. She’s tough and she’s startling.

Now, Faludi is looking at post-9/11 America, and here’s what she sees: a frightened country that has retreated to a core national myth from the wells of history — vulnerable settlers, under attack by savages, putting big brave men out front and little women in the kitchen.

We are prisoners, she says, of a “master narrative” that is showing its age.

This hour, On Point: Susan Faludi and “The Terror Dream.”

-Tom Ashbrook

Guests:

Susan Faludi, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and best-selling author of “The Terror Dream: Fear and Fantasy in Post-9/11 America,” “Stiffed: The Betrayal of the American Man,” and “Backlash: The Undeclared War Against American Women.”

Mona Charen, syndicated columnist and author of “Do-Gooders: How Liberals Hurt Those They Claim to Help (and the Rest of Us)” and “Useful Idiots: How Liberals Got It Wrong in the Cold War and Still Blame America.”

Tags: American history, feminism, history