Montclair Library Open Book/Open Mind Series: Leslie Bennetts and Mary Alice Wiliams Discuss Joan Rivers

On Sunday, December 4, Montclair Public Library & Foundation’s next Open Book / Open Mind series will feature Leslie Bennetts in Conversation with Mary Alice Williams on Joan Rivers.

Two brilliant feminist journalists discuss the life of Joan Rivers, who smashed innumerable barriers for women in show business, even as she herself remained a prisoner of the sexist values of her youth. Joan Rivers’s life, rife with contradiction, is the subject of Leslie Bennetts’s new biography, Last Girl Before Freeway. Rivers, the first ,female, late-night TV host, thought a woman’s happiness depended on having a husband, but hers destroyed her career. She believed that beauty and youth were crucial to women’s success, and yet she built a billion-dollar company in her 60’s and 70’s.

Leslie Bennetts is the author of the national bestseller The Feminine Mistake as well as a longtime Vanity Fair writer and former New York Times reporter. Montclair native Mary Alice Williams is an accomplished broadcast journalist who was anchor of NBC’s Weekend Today in New York and Vice President of the News Division of CNN. She’s currently anchor of NJTV news. Bennetts will sign books after the talk.
Open Book / Open Mind Series: Leslie Bennetts and Mary Alice Wiliams Discuss Joan Rivers
Sunday, December 4 at 4 pm
Montclair Public Library, 50 South Fullerton Avenue, Montclair, NJ, 07042
Free, limited number of seats by reservation. Remaining seats first come, first served. Register online here or call 973-744-0500 ext 2235