NewSouth Publishing is delighted to announce it has acquired Australian and New Zealand rights to The Book that Taught the World to Orgasm and then Disappeared: Shere Hite and The Hite Report, a groundbreaking new work by Australian historian Rosa Campbell in a deal brokered by Kate Johnson from Wolf Literary Agency.

Shere Hite was a feminist trailblazer whose controversial research transformed public debates about sex, marriage, and the female orgasm. Despite being one of the most influential thinkers of the second wave feminist movement, Hite is now little known, little studied, and rarely read. Her landmark 1976 publication, The Hite Report, was the first major feminist investigation into the link between sex and male power. It sold millions of copies worldwide and sparked a global re examination of assumptions about women’s sexual lives. How, then, did both Hite and her revolutionary work fade from public consciousness?

In this major new book, Campbell draws on original archival research and sharp cultural analysis to examine Hite’s complicated life and enduring legacy. Campbell traces Hite’s fraught childhood, her time working in the porn industry, the meteoric rise of The Hite Report, and her eventual vilification and erasure during the ascendency of far right evangelical politics. At the same time, Campbell critiques Hite’s work for its own blind spots and lack of intersectionality.

In a post #MeToo era marked by escalating global culture wars, The Book that Taught the World to Orgasm and then Disappeared reveals how ideological shifts can propel women to extraordinary heights — and just as swiftly silence them.

'The Hite Report is the 30th bestselling book of all time, with 50 million copies sold all over the world. It was the first to ask women how they felt about sex, but now hardly anyone has heard of it, or its wild, visionary author, ex-Playboy model turned feminist Shere Hite.

'I account for why; tracing Hite’s celebrity rise and dramatic fall through the backlash against feminism and the rise of the American right in the 1980s. I offer lessons for us as we live through our own culture war over sex and feminism today,’ says Campbell.

About the Author

Rosa Campbell is a historian of global feminism based in London. Originally from Sydney, she is a Leverhulme Postdoctoral Fellow at King’s College London and holds a PhD in history from the University of Cambridge. Her research has appeared in leading academic journals as well as in Literary Hub, The White Review, The Independent, Public Books, and Meanjin. Campbell is also the recipient of an Edna Ryan Award from the Australian Women’s Electoral Lobby for her contribution to feminist scholarship and advocacy.

The Book that Taught the World to Orgasm and then Disappeared will be published by NewSouth in Australia and New Zealand on 1 May 2026.