Shere Hite burst upon the American scene in 1976 with the publication of her first book, The Hite Report: A Nationwide Study on Female Sexuality. Since then, she has authored a number of other best-selling books on sex and relationships—delighting her publishers, intriguing her public, and frustrating many social scientists, who consider her research to be seriously flawed.

Born Shirley Diana Gregory in St. Joseph, Missouri, Hite spent her childhood being shuttled between parents, grandparents, and other relatives. She earned bachelor's and master's degrees in history from the University of Florida. She then moved to New York City, where she dropped out of a doctoral program at Columbia, worked as a model, and eventually joined the National Organization for Women (NOW). Feminism led her to the realization that female sexuality had rarely been studied scientifically, and the determination to change that fact set Hite...