In America, someone is sexually assaulted every two-and-a-half minutes. Now more than ever, a comprehensive reevaluation of sexual violence is urgently necessary. Award-winning author and historian Joanna Bourke delivers this timely investigation of rape, a crime that is increasingly difficult to define, yet devastating in its impact. " "She draws from the work of criminologists, sociologists, and psychologists to examine the motivations driving perpetrators of sex crimes, insisting that "rapists are not born; they become. " The rapist, not the victim, is the target of Bourke's unflinching analysis, for the perpetrator himself, she asserts, can only be reformed once he is humanized. Though indebted to a growing body of feminist analyses, she radically departs from this vein of literature in order to place the rapist in his (or her) political-cultural context.