"Speaking of Friendship" provides an in-depth look at the friendships of middle-class women. It explores the details of their everyday experiences with making and keeping friends from the beginnings of casual acquaintanceship to the cultivation of close friends and confidantes. The importance women attach to having friends is seen in the determined search they undertake to replace friends from whom they are periodically separated by residential mobility, job switches, and other major changes in their lives. Based on interviews with seventy-five middle- and upper-middle-class women between...