Enter Helen

By veteran magazine journalist and author Brooke Hause, ENTER HELEN is an intimate, in-depth portrait of the inimitable, iconic, and highly controversial champion of Sex and the Single Girl: Helen Gurley Brown. In 1965, Helen Gurley Brown-best known for her groundbreaking 1962 manifesto Sex and the Single Girl-took over the ailing Cosmopolitan magazine. Under her stewardship, it became one of the most bankable brands on the planet, with 64 editions published in 34 languages and distributed in more than 100 countries, and one of the most revolutionary. At a time when women's magazines were instructing housewives on how to make the perfect casserole, Brown reimagined Cosmo for the single girl next door: a hard-working, sex-loving woman, who didn't need to be married with children to be happy. The face of Brown's message was her own; she walked the walk, having forged a glamorous media career out of a bleak Ozarks upbringing. Drawing from her personal letters, documents, and writings, as well as new interviews with former colleagues and friends, Brooke Hauser focuses on Helen's most transformative years at Cosmo, splicing her narrative of that time with insightful flashbacks to chart Brown's madcap journey from the Ozarks to Los Angeles. Set mostly against the backdrop of New York City during the Sexual Revolution and the Women's Liberation Movement, ENTER HELEN tells the dramatic, cinematic story of an icon who bucked the trend to define her destiny on her own terms, and urged future generations of woman to do the same. The math is simple: Without Helen Gurley Brown, there would be no Sex and the City, no Girls. She was the voice of a generation that both revered and rejected her, and the catalyst for the still-ongoing national dialogue about women, sex, work, and having it all-changing the industry, the culture, and the world.