Discover the Best Books Written by Naomi Wolf

Naomi Rebekah Wolf (born November 12, 1962) is an American feminist author, journalist, and conspiracy theorist. Following her first book, The Beauty Myth (1991), she became a leading spokeswoman of what has been described as the third wave of the feminist movement. Feminists, including Gloria Steinem and Betty Friedan, praised her work. Others, including Camille Paglia, criticized it. In the 1990s, she was a political advisor to the presidential campaigns of Bill Clinton and Al Gore.

Wolf's later books include the bestseller The End of America in 2007 and Vagina: A New Biography. Critics have challenged the quality and accuracy of the scholarship in her books; her serious misreading of court records for Outrages (2019) led to its US publication being canceled. Wolf's career in journalism has included topics such as abortion and the Occupy Wall Street movement in articles for media outlets such as The Nation, The New Republic, The Guardian, and The Huffington Post.

Since around 2014, Wolf has been described as a conspiracy theorist by journalists and media outlets.[a] She has received criticism for promoting misinformation on topics such as beheadings carried out by ISIS, the Western African Ebola virus epidemic, and Edward Snowden. She has objected to COVID-19 lockdowns and has criticized COVID-19 vaccines. In June 2021, her Twitter account was suspended for posting anti-vaccine misinformation.

Wolf was born in San Francisco to a Jewish family. Her mother is Deborah Goleman Wolf, an anthropologist and the author of The Lesbian Community. Her father was Leonard Wolf, a Romanian-born scholar of gothic horror novels, a San Francisco State University faculty member, and a Yiddish translator. Leonard Wolf died from Parkinson's disease on March 20, 2019. 

Wolf has a brother, Aaron, and a half-brother, Julius, from her father's earlier relationship; it remained a secret until Wolf was in her 30s. She attended Lowell High School and debated in regional speech tournaments as a member of the Lowell Forensic Society. Wolf attended Yale University, receiving her Bachelor of Arts in English literature in 1984. From 1985 to 1987, she was a Rhodes Scholar at New College, Oxford. 

Wolf's initial period at Oxford University was difficult as she experienced "raw sexism, overt snobbery, and casual antisemitism." Her writing became so personal and subjective that her tutor advised her against submitting her doctoral thesis. Wolf told interviewer Rachel Cooke, writing for The Observer, in 2019: "My subject didn't exist. I wanted to write feminist theory, and I kept being told by the dons there was no such thing." Her writing at this time formed the basis of her first book, The Beauty Myth.

Wolf ultimately returned to Oxford, completing her Doctor of Philosophy degree in English literature in 2015. Her thesis, supervised by Stefano Evangelista of Trinity College, formed the basis for her 2019 book Outrages: Sex, Censorship, and the Criminalization of Love.