An international best-seller, first published in 1970 when Shulamith Firestone was just twenty-five years old, The Dialectic of Sex broke new ground in presenting a theory of politics for the women's liberation movement. Firestone posits that feminism is the key radical ideology, the missing link between Marx and Freud, uniting the political with the personal. The book remains of pressing relevance today - a testament to Firestone's startlingly prescience.

'A landmark manifesto' Susan Faludi, New Yorker

'A precocious manifesto of total feminist revolution' Audrey Wollen, Harper's Magazine

Without so much as a single fanny joke or wacky dating anecdote, the Dialectic gripped and electrified thousands of people, giving the so called Second Wave of feminism much of its initial impetus and energy. * New Statesman *
The combination of theoretical ambition and wit in The Dialectic of Sex is as refreshing as ever. * Radical Philosophy *
The Dialectic of Sex is a must-have for those interested in feminist theory, both past and present. It's reappearance now, during yet another period of 'ridicule' towards women's rights, is perhaps even more pertinent than its first publication. -- Kathleen Hanna, founding member of the Riot Grrrls movement
A sharp and brilliant mind is at work here ... Firestone has seized a crucial point: the biological 'inequality' of men and women may be a fact, but we stopped evolving biologically thousands of years ago. The hunting-party mentality today is not just an atavism: it's a threat to the survival of the species. -- John Leonard * New York Times *
Firestone's vision of a future without natural inequality or the nuclear family is breathtaking in its scope as well as in its conviction that technology holds the key to the emancipation of women and children. -- Nina Power
A landmark manifesto. -- Susan Faludi * New Yorker *
Betty Friedan proposed letting someone else make the bread; Firestone imagines a new society . With a name like Shulamith Firestone, how could you not change the world? -- Joanna Biggs * Guardian *
Written at fever pitch over the space of several months, The Dialectic of Sex is a visionary document that theorizes 'sex' as a category of gender apartheid: that is, the systematic segregation and enforced social, political and economic discrimination against women in society. -- Jenni Sorkin * Frieze *

Shulamith Firestone was born in Ottowa, Canada, in 1945. She grew up in the midwest United States and attended Yavneh of Telshe Yeshiva, Washington University, and the Art Institute of Chicago, from which she received a bachelor of fine arts in painting. She was founder of the women's liberation movement and editor of Notes, a journal of radical feminism. Firestone's The Dialectic of Sex was published when she was just twenty-five years old and became a bestseller, as well as the first book of the women's liberation movement to propound a feminist theory of sex. She died in 2012.