Betty Prashker, a pioneering editor of the 20th century who as one of the first women with the power to acquire books published such classics as Kate Millett’s “Sexual Politics” and Susan Faludi’s “Backlash,” died July 30 at age 99.
Entertainment This photo provided by Random House shows Betty Prashker doing an interview for an oral history in 2001. – Betty Prashker, a pioneering editor of the 20th century who as one of the first women with the power to acquire books published such classics as Kate Millett 's “Sexual Politics” and Susan Faludi 's “Backlash" and helped oversee the careers of Jean Auel, Dominick Dunne and Erik Larson , among others, died July 30 at age 99.
“Doubleday doesn't have enough women in top jobs,” Prashker remembered him telling her, as quoted in Al Silverman's “The Time of Their Lives,” a publishing history. “And if we want to continue to do business with the government, we have got to do something in the way of affirmative action and have more women in our group.”
“My determined and devoted agent tried everything, including pitching the book as ‘a female “In Search of Excellence”’ — with both of us praying no one would ask what that meant,” Faludi wrote on medium.com in 2014. ”In the end, the one person who was interested was Betty Prashker, editor-in-chief at Crown Publishers and, not coincidentally, a feminist pioneer."
Prashker remained as an executive at Crown until the late 1990s, when she stepped back and became an editor at large, continuing to work with Larson, among others. In 1998, her name entered film history when director Whit Stillman, who had previously worked at Doubleday, called one of the characters Justine Prashker in “The Last Days of Disco."
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Betty Prashker, publisher of the feminist classics 'Sexual Politics' and 'Backlash,' dies at age 99Betty Prashker, a pioneering editor of the 20th century, who as one of the first women with the power to acquire books published such classics as Kate Millett’s “Sexual Politics” and Susan Faludi’s “Backlash,” died July 30 at age 99. Her daughter, Lucy Prashker, says Prashker died at a family home in Massachusetts.
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Betty Prashker, publisher of the feminist classics 'Sexual Politics' and 'Backlash,' dies at age 99Betty Prashker, a pioneering editor of the 20th century who as one of the first women with the power to acquire books published such classics as Kate Millett’s “Sexual Politics” and Susan Faludi’s “Backlash,” died July 30 at age 99.
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Betty Prashker, publisher of the feminist classics 'Sexual Politics' and 'Backlash,' dies at age 99Betty Prashker, a pioneering editor of the 20th century who as one of the first women with the power to acquire books published such classics as Kate Millett’s “Sexual Politics” and Susan Faludi’s “Backlash,” died July 30 at age 99.
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