Sharp: The Women Who Made an Art of Having an Opinion

Celebrated literary critic Michelle Dean’s powerful portrait of ten exceptional women writers, known for their “sharpness,” navigated a sexist culture to carve out space in the literary world. Dorothy Parker, Rebecca West, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, Pauline Kael, Joan Didion, Nora Ephron, Renata Adler, and Janet Malcolm used their pens to assert themselves in a male-dominated environment. Sharp vividly depicts the intellectual beau monde of 20th-century New York, where literary battles raged between gossip-filled parties and the pages of literary journals. Mixing biography, criticism, and history, this book proves that anyone can claim the mantle of writer and potentially change the world.

(This book may contain a sharpie mark on the top or bottom edge and may show mild signs of shelfwear.)