Joanna Bourke takes the issue of rape out of the academic ghettos and distills the truth so often exploited to sell newspapers. Neither prurient nor overly sympathetic toward any party, she investigates rape from a historical standpoint, examining the history of sexual aggression, the idea of rape as a social construct, and the often-ignored idea of embodiment, and analyzes the physical response of rapists as well as the theory that rape is about power.

Indebted to a growing body of sophisticated feminist analyses about rape victims, Bourke here shifts the emphasis from the victims to the perpetrators in order to place rapists in their historical context. An invaluable study, this book delivers the hard truth that if we are to imagine a world free of unwanted sexual violence, then we must consider the issue of rape from every angle.