From one of Amer­i­ca’s lead­ing biog­ra­phers, the defin­i­tive sto­ry of the rad­i­cal fem­i­nist and anti-pornog­ra­phy activist, based on exclu­sive access to her archives

Fif­teen years after her death, Andrea Dworkin remains one of the most impor­tant and chal­leng­ing fig­ures in sec­ond-wave fem­i­nism. Although fre­quent­ly rel­e­gat­ed to its more rad­i­cal fringes, Dworkin was with­out doubt a for­mi­da­ble and influ­en­tial writer, a philoso­pher, and an activist―a bril­liant fig­ure who inspired and infu­ri­at­ed in equal mea­sure. Her many detrac­tors were eager to reduce her to the car­i­ca­ture of the angry, man-hat­ing fem­i­nist who believed that all sex was rape, and as a result, her work has long been mis­un­der­stood. It is in recent years, espe­cial­ly with the rise of the #MeToo move­ment, that there has been a resur­gence of inter­est in her ideas.

This biog­ra­phy is the per­fect com­ple­ment to the wide­ly reviewed anthol­o­gy of her writ­ing, Last Days at Hot Slit, pub­lished in 2019, pro­vid­ing much-need­ed con­text to her work. Giv­en exclu­sive access to nev­er-before-pub­lished pho­tographs and archives, includ­ing her let­ters to many of the major fig­ures of sec­ond-wave fem­i­nism, award-win­ning biog­ra­ph­er Mar­tin Duber­man traces Dwork­in’s life, from her abu­sive first mar­riage through her cen­tral role in the sex and pornog­ra­phy wars of the fol­low­ing decades. This is a vital, com­plex, and long over­due reassess­ment of the life and work of one of the tow­er­ing fig­ures of sec­ond-wave feminism.