SOURCE: O'Neill, William L. “Divorce Trauma.” Progressive 38, no. 9 (September 1974): 57-58.

In the following mixed review, O'Neill finds Divorced in America valuable, but contends that it is also reactionary, nostalgic, and ultimately unsatisfying.

Every man considering a divorce should be required by law to read Divorced in America. In this book a sensitive, intelligent writer describes at length not only how painful and destructive his own divorce was, but how ghastly divorces in general are. Since Joseph Epstein had an exceptionally easy divorce (his wife of ten years did not ask for custody of their children or for anything except a car and a few thousand dollars), the harm done him by it is all the more impressive. Epstein has given a great deal of thought to his own experience, which is recounted here in detail, and has read widely in the literature of divorce. The result is a...