Betty Friedan’s best-selling book, “The Feminine Mystique” was published 50 years ago, in February 1963. Its examination of dissatisfaction felt by many middle-class American housewives led to a national conversation about women’s rights in America. In 1966 Betty Friedan was elected as the first president of the National Organization for Women; she died in 2006. Stephanie Coontz, the author of “A Strange Stirring,” describes how Betty Friedan introduced the feminist movement to a generation of American women in the early 1960s.