Second Sex

Newly translated and unabridged in English for the first time, Simone de Beauvoir's masterwork is a powerful analysis of the Western notion of woman, and a groundbreaking exploration of inequality and otherness. This long-awaited new edition reinstates significant portions of the original French text that were cut in the first English translation. Vital and groundbreaking, Beauvoir's pioneering and impressive text remains as pertinent today as it was sixty years ago, and will continue to provoke and inspire generations of men and women to come.

About the Author :
Simone de Beauvoir was born in Paris in 1908. In 1929 she became the youngest person ever to obtain the "agregation" in philosophy at the Sorbonne, placing second to Jean-Paul Sartre. She taught at lycees at Marseille and Rouen from 1931 to 1937, and in Paris from 1938 to 1943. After the war, she emerged as one of the leaders of the existentialist movement, working with Sartre on "Les Temps Modernes." The author of several books, including "The Mandarins "(1957), which was awarded the Prix Goncourt, Beauvoir was one of the most influential thinkers of her generation. She died in 1986. Constance Borde and Sheila Malovany-Chevallier, both American, are longtime residents of France and former teachers at the Institut d'Etudes Politiques in Paris. Judith Thurman, author of "Isak Dinesen" and "Secrets of the Flesh: A Life of Colette, " is a staff writer at "The New Yorker."

Review :
"The effect of the new translation, which should be applauded, is to make Beauvoir more herself. . . still lively, still apropos." --Slate "This is the edition Beauvoir herself would have wanted, one so true to the original that we can hear her voice in the text. Borde and Malovany-Chevallier's new translation is long overdue, and it is a triumph." --Margaret Simons, Distinguished Research Professor Emerita, Southern Illinois University "[Borde and Malovany-Chevallier's translation] can be read with confidence, enlightenment, and pleasure. . . . A significant step forward and a remarkable achievement. So if you're one of those people who always meant to read "The Second Sex"--why not now?" --Women's Review of Books "From Eve's apple to Virginia Woolf's room of her own, Beauvoir's treatise remains an essential rallying point, urging self-sufficiency and offering the fruit of knowledge." --"Vogue" "[A] long-awaited achievement." -"Book Bench," newyorker.com Praise from the UK for the new edition of "The Second Sex" "[A] masterpiece. . . . Restores essential passages that have been missing for 60 years." --"The Times" "Groundbreaking. . . . A fresh, much expanded, more intelligible book which repays re-reading by adherents of the old version, and cries out for attention from young women who have not been exposed to this most powerful of feminist thinkers. "The Second Sex" [is] the foundation text of second-wave feminism. It is probably the most important and influential philosophical treatise of the 20th century." --"The Irish Times" ""The Second Sex" is an inquiry into a subject with profound implications for the entire human race, and its ideas are as fresh and inspiring as they were when [Beauvoir] began work. . . . Now Beauvoir's great work is available in a full English translation for the f