[13] In 2014, high-profile women such as journalists Jill Abramson and Katha Pollitt, actress/writer Lena Dunham, and feminist novelist Roxane Gay, among many others, reread each of the chapters of the book and examined their contemporary relevance.

"[14] Reflecting on the legacy of the book in The New Yorker in July 2022, Molly Fischer called Backlash "an era-defining phenomenon" that "presented a damningly methodical assessment of women’s status in Reagan-era America.

[20] Another New York Times journalist, John Leonard, stated "In The Terror Dream a skeptical Faludi reads everything, second-guesses everybody, watches too much talking-head TV and emerges from the archives and the pulp id like an exorcist and a Penthesilea.

"[22] On the other hand, Kirkus Reviews claimed that the book was a "rich, incisive analysis of the surreality of American life in the wake of 9/11" and that it was "brilliant, illuminating and essential.

"[23] Reviewing the book for Fresh Air, Maureen Corrigan praised Faludi for her "characteristic restraint and depth of research" and for her "rigorous insistence on truth".

"[26] Writing in The Guardian, Rachel Cooke described the book as "an elegant masterpiece" and "a searching investigation of identity barely disguised as a sometimes funny and sometimes very painful family saga.

[29] The book has been translated into multiple foreign languages, including Spanish, Italian, German, Korean, Polish,[30] Portuguese, Hungarian, Turkish, Dutch, and Chinese.

[31] Faludi has rejected the claim advanced by critics that there is a "rigid, monolithic feminist 'orthodoxy,'"[32] noting in response that she has disagreed with Gloria Steinem about pornography and Naomi Wolf about abortion.

Like Gloria Steinem,[33][34] Faludi has criticized the obscurantism prevalent in academic feminist theorizing, saying, "There's this sort of narrowing specialization and use of coded, elitist language of deconstruction or New Historicism or whatever they're calling it these days, which is to my mind impenetrable and not particularly useful.