An eclectic sisterhood, Dorothy Parker, Hannah Arendt, Mary McCarthy, Susan Sontag, Joan Didion, Nora Ephron, and Janet Malcolm lived intertwined lives as they cut through 20th-century intellectual life in the United States, arguing as fervently with each other as they did with the men who so often belittled their work as journalists, novelists, critics, and poets. Mixing biography, criticism, and social history, Michelle Dean creates an enthralling exploration of how a group of brilliant women became central figures in the world of letters, staked out territory for themselves, and began to change the world.