She earned her Ph.D. from Brown University. Her book, No Direction Home: the American Family and the Fear of National Decline, 1968-1980 (University of North Carolina Press, 2007), explores the place of the family in debates about American national decline, 1968-1980. Her articles and essays have appeared in The World the Sixties Made: Politics and Culture in Recent America (Temple University Press, 2003), Race, Nation, and Empire in American History (University of North Carolina Press, 2007), Diplomatic History, and The New Republic. She is currently writing a cultural history of the 1979 nuclear accident at Three Mile Island. Zaretsky teaches courses in modern American history, research and writing, gender and family, and an introductory course in American Studies. In 2009, the History News Network named her a top young historian.