Enter Helen

Think of this as a biography with the pace of a television drama about Helen Gurley Brown, the Ozarks-raised editor who took over a struggling Cosmopolitan in the mid-1960s and turned it into one of the most successful magazine brands worldwide. Brown was also the author of Sex and the Single Girl, and her magazine spoke to women at a moment when most publications still focused on household tips and recipes. She championed the independent, ambitious single woman, and she recast both the magazine and the idea of womanhood in the process.

Brown was married to Hollywood producer David Brown, but the figure she came to represent was the Cosmo Girl. The book follows how she pushed her way to the top of the media world through determination and hard work, and how rumors about other means of advancement have followed her story ever since.

Based on new interviews with Brown's friends and former colleagues, and on her private letters, the book evokes New York City during the Sexual Revolution and the Women's Movement. Its cast includes Hugh Hefner, Nora Ephron, and Gloria Steinem. It presents Brown as a controversial pioneer of modern feminism whose frank talk about sex, work, reproductive choice, and whether women could have it all shaped later shows such as Sex and the City and Girls.