The stiletto has always aroused mixes feelings an object of desire enthusiastically embraced by Hollywood starlets in the 1950s or vociferously reviled by radical feminists in the 1970s as an object of woman's oppression by men. This remarkable and timely book charts the rise, fall, and rise again of an impractical, provocative shoe that has enjoyed an incredible renaissance in the last ten years and is a fascinating reflection of women's social and sexual histories.