In Reckoning, Linda Hirshman, acclaimed historian of social change movements, delivers the sweeping story of the struggle leading up to #MeToo and beyond: from the first stories of workplace harassment percolating to the surface in the 1970s; to the fulcrum of Clinton/Lewinsky, when a forgiving Gloria Steinem “swerved” so that, according to Hirshman, “for two decades most liberal men in the Democratic party didn't take feminists seriously." Legal liberals even resisted the movement to end rape on campus. And then came Harvey Weinstein and the reckoning.

Hirshman tells the full story of the legal cases that have quietly prepared the way for the takedown of the abusers and harassers of the workplace, and holds up African American women as having taken some of the most important stands against sexual harassment over the past fifty years. Finally, Reckoning shines fascinating light on how our watershed #MeToo moment has come from pioneering women in the new media.

Reckoning is a movement-defining, revelatory, essential social history.