In this compelling chronicle, Margaret A. Simons details her search for the true origins of Beauvoir's existential philosophy.

She describes the pathbreaking discoveries she made in Beauvoir's handwritten diary from 1927, uncovers new evidence of the sexist exclusion of Beauvoir from the philosophical canon, reveals evidence that the African American writer Richard Wright provided Beauvoir with the model of oppression she used in The Second Sex, and shows the influence of The Second Sex in transforming Sartre's philosophy.