Candida Royalle and the Sexual Revolution: A History from Below

“She was from a fairly conventional background, but from the moment she left home she threw herself into art. She went to art school—this was the late 1960s New York, so there was a lot going on. Then, like many people did at that point in their lives in that era, she got in a car with three other women and drove to San Francisco, hit it right at the moment where things were really blowing up there. She enrolled in art classes, experimented with a lot of drugs, had a lot of sexual partners, lived in a commune—lived, in some ways, a fairly ragged life—and found she could make money working in sexually explicit films. I personally got a lot out of this book, because Candida Royalle and I were almost the same age. Kamensky does a great job resurrecting the tumult of the times we grew up in. I really, really loved that. But it was sad to have to watch her as she waged some painful personal battles.” Read more...

The Best Biographies: The 2025 NBCC Shortlist

Mary Ann Gwinn, Journalist