A career feminist whose work spans the distance from political activism to historical research and novel writing, Susan Brownmiller (born 1935) is most recognized for raising public awareness of violent crimes against women and children.

Brownmiller was born in Brooklyn on February 15, 1935. She returned to New York City twenty years later, after graduating from Cornell University. She worked for four years as an actress before beginning her journalistic career as assistant to the managing editor of Coronet. During the 1960s she worked as a freelance writer with feminist leanings, and also in various capacities for Newsweek, Village Voice, NBC, and ABC. Especially relevant to the themes of her later writing, in 1968 Brownmiller cofounded the New York Radical Feminists among whose political actions was a sit-in at the offices of Ladies Home Journal. Her first book, Shirley Chisholm (1970), a biography of the first African-American Congresswoman, was expanded from a cover...