Despite its many burdens, the body remains a source of power, even in an era as technologized as our own. Arriving at a moment in which basic bodily rights are once again imperiled, Olivia Laing uses the life of the renegade psychoanalyst Wilhelm Reich to explore gay rights, sexual liberation, feminism, and the civil rights movement. In this "impassioned and provocative" blend (Publishers Weekly) of history and memoir, Laing also profiles such figures as Nina Simone, Christopher Isherwood, Sigmund Freud, Susan Sontag, and Malcolm X.