Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Ellen

Goodman s latest collection, Keeping in

Touch, brilliantly charts the course of the

first half of the Eighties. With insight, wit

and intelligence, Goodman makes sense

of the chaotic and often confounding is-

sues at the center of our lives.

0n women: "The woman of another era

who married her architecture and be-

came a housewife is now a working wife

with the double work load of a societal

bigamist."

0n star wars: "Our only real weapon

is that familiar and flawed software

called the human mind."

On work: "For all the talk about stress,

there is still a real tension between the

life we want for ourselves and the work

we want out of others"

0n surrogate mothers:"1 never expected

to see a new breed of entrepreneurs

arrive on the scene hanging out shingles

that offer Wombs for Rent.

0n high-tech terrors: "We are much

more vulnerable to the single computer

byte gone awry and the sole terrorist

gone mad.The more centralized our

world, the easier it is to sabotage."

On corporate love: "The business world

is being fed the illusion that they can

and, indeed, should manage emotions by

removing them from the workplace."

0n the cult of midlife bestiary: "Those of

us who failed to look like Brooke Shields

at seventeen can now fail to look like

Victoria Principal at thirty-three and like

Linda Evans at forty-one and like Sophia

Loren at fifty."