She called herself a ''square from Peoria,'' but when Betty Friedan published The Feminine Mystique in 1963, she lobbed a stink bomb into the apron pockets of housewives across America. The book brought feminism to the mainstream, charging that American women sacrificed their intelligence on the altar of domesticity. In Betty Friedan: Her Life freelance journalist Hennessee chronicles Friedan's precocious childhood, her volatile and abusive marriage, her founding of NOW, and her contentious, often unwelcome presence in the women's movement, where Gloria Steinem became her archrival. Though she's too forgiving of Friedan's early homophobia, the author delivers an unsentimental portrait of a cultural heroine who, ironically, became known as ''the feminist who didn't like women.'' B+
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