We know so much about the devastating realities of gendered oppression in the present, but how did patriarchy first become embedded in societies all over the globe? Investigating the latest developments in science, anthropology and archaeology, author Angela Saini paints the complex history of how elite men managed to accumulate so much power, and explains why there is nothing inevitable about male domination. Far from being natural, patriarchies are instead long, slow grifts.

Angela Saini is an award-winning journalist and author based in New York. She teaches science writing at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, presents radio and television programmes, and her writing has appeared in National Geographic, Foreign Policy and Wired. In 2022 she was a Logan Nonfiction Program Fellow and a fellow of the Humboldt Residency Programme in Berlin. Her latest book The Patriarchs: How Men Came to Rule was published in spring 2023.