Phyllis Chesler, Susan Faludi, Betty Friedan, Marilyn French, Erica Jong, Kate Millet, Robin Morgan, Gloria Steinem, Alice Walker and Naomi Wolf: a rollcall of courageous women whose ideas have struck at the very core of Western society. These women, through their books, became international catalysts; they have influenced the way generations of women live their lives.

Susan Mitchell's wonderfully intimate and insightful collection of interviews with these ten women reveals the personal lives behind the public fame – or notoriety – as well as charting the progress of the most revolutionary social change of the late twentieth century. What drove these women? Have their ideas resulted in the change they hoped for? Have their beliefs changed? How do their books and lives connect? What is fact, fiction or fantasy? Do they practise what they preach?

Mitchell's interviewees leap off the page; their honesty and courage in opening up are remarkable.

At a senior lecturer at the University of South Australia, Susan Mitchell has taught Creative Writing and Scriptwriting for television and radio, and Literary Studies. She has presented her own morning programme on ABC radio and her own interview programme, 'Susan Mitchell: In Conversation', on ABC television. Susan is a feature writer for 'The Australian' and is the author of six best-selling non-fiction books as well as one novel.

Her heroines are Simone de Beauvoir and Mae West.

• Susan Mitchell asks Marilyn French, Gloria Steinem, Betty Friedan, Robin Morgan, Erica Jong, Alice Walker, Susan Faludi, Naomi Wolf, Phyllis Chester and Kate Millett how their ideas have irrevocably altered the way women in the last 20 years have viewed themselves and their place in society – what drove them? What did they think they were changing? How have their own lives changed and evolved and how has this changed their beliefs?

• Susan Mitchell – famous for her interviewing skills – elicits amazingly honest and revealing answers to questions that penetrate the public gloss of fame and success. This is a wonderfully intimate and insightful collection.

• Mitchell puts it all together to reveal a powerful, emotional and intellectual documentary of the Women’s Movement with all its passions, its complexities, its contradictions, its diversity, losses and triumphs.

• Introduction by Suzanne Moore, Guardian columnist and cultural commentator.

• Anyone and everyone interested in politics, sexual or otherwise, of the late 20th Century will want to read this book.

• Fabulous publicity potential. Susan Mitchell will be here for publicity.