An Inside Look At Notorious RBG

When Samantha Bee is emceeing your book launch, you know you’ve created something special.

Bee was among a bevy of feminist icons, media leaders, and legislators who showed up last Tuesday for the debut of Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, by authors Irin Carmon and Shana Knizhnik. And the festivities were as rousing as one would expect of a celebration feting the most recognizable figure currently seated on the Supreme Court. In a tribute video, RBG fans declared why they dissent, and the last remaining dry eyes in the house were quickly toast when a youth acapella group from The Lower East Side Girls Club took the stage, chanting “I dissent!” in unison with fists raised between verses of Tom Petty’s “I Won’t Back Down.”

Carmon and Knizhnik’s book — which The New York Times aptly calls “a frank and admiring piece of fan nonfiction” — had only been available for a few hours, and it was already a hit. How could it not be following the success of Kniznik’s viral Tumblr NotoriousRBG, launched in 2013 after Ginsberg broke tradition and read multiple scathing dissents from the bench? Once RBG herself told Katie Couric that “I think she’s [Kniznik] created a wonderful thing with…