Bachelor Girls

In plays such as Isn't It Romantic, Uncommon Women and Others, and the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Heidi Chronicles, Wendy Wasserstein put her finger on the pulse of her past-modern, post-feminist sisters and delivered her diagnosis with shrewd good humor and an unerring sense of the absurd. That same engaging sensibility bubbles through the twenty-nine essays in Bachelor Girls, in which Wasserstein presents her observations on:

—Boyfriends:  "The worse the boyfriend, the more stunning your American Express bill."

—Role Models:  "In the forties emulating an ideal woman meant bobbing your hair like Betty Grable's. In the eighties, because of Jessica Lange, women have to get a Pulitzer Prize-winning actor-playwright to fall in love with them, have a child by one of the world's great dancers, be nominated for two Academy Awards, and enjoy doing the laundry alone on a farm."

—Success: "I knew my friend Patti was a big-time Hollywood agent the first time I saw her dial a telephone with a pencil."

Ranging from the dietary secrets of lemon mousse to the politics of the second marriage, with stopovers at a bar mitzvah in Westchester, a chess tournament in Rumania, and a Tokyo production of Isn't It Romantic, Bachelor Girls is pure Wasserstein, which is to say, pure joy.

• Shiksa Goddess: (Or, How I Spent My Forties) Essays
• The Heidi Chronicles: Uncommon Women and Others & Isn't It Romantic