No writer is as emblematic of the American 20th century as Susan Sontag, lauded and loathed for her writings on art, sexuality, and politics. Utilizing hundreds of interviews—and featuring nearly 100 images—this Pulitzer Prize-winning biography is based on the writer's restricted archives, and on access to many people who have never before spoken about Sontag, including Annie Leibovitz. Exploring the agonizing insecurity behind Sontag's formidable public face, Benjamin Moser chronicles the broken relationships, her struggles with sexuality, and her promotion of high culture as an activism of its own against the cruelties and absurdities of a country that had lost its way.