The Prisoner of Sex, Norman Mailer. Signed First Edition.

Norman Mailer was an American novelist, journalist, essayist, playwright, film-maker, actor, and activist. Raised in Brooklyn, he entered Harvard University at the age of 16, majoring in engineering but taking most of his electives in writing. During World War 2 he was drafted into the US Army and was stationed in the Philippines with the 112th Cavalry. He was first assigned as a typist and then as a wire lineman. In the spring of 1945 he completed more than two dozen patrols in contested territory and was in several firefights. He drew upon this experience for his first novel, The Naked and the Dead, which was published in 1948.

Mailer was 25 when The Naked and the Dead was published. The novel focuses on the experiences of one platoon on a fictional island in the South Pacific during World War 2. They are faced with a campaign to drive out the Japanese so that the US Army can advance into the Philippines. It was incredibly successful and remained on the New York Times best seller list for 62 weeks. In 1998 the Modern Library named The Naked and the Dead one of the top hundred novels in the English language. Mailer continued to write for the remainder of his life, publishing 12 novels and numerous works of award-winning non-fiction, earning him a spot among America's most distinguished men of letters. In 1979 he won the Pulitzer Prize for his novel The Executioner's Song which depicts the events related to the execution of Gary Gilmore for murder by the state of Utah. That one's a personal favorite of mine.

The Prisoner of Sex, published in 1971 is Mailer's response to Kate Millett's classic feminist book Sexual Politics. Despite a lukewarm reception, and a backlash from feminists, Mailer is able to weave a contemplative and probing discussion on the dialectic of man and woman. The is the first edition, signed by Mailer:

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