Silvia Federici examines the transition from feudalism to capitalism through the lens of women's history, arguing that the accumulation of capital required the subjugation of women and the privatization of reproductive labor. Federici, a feminist activist and scholar, focuses on the witch hunts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as crucial to this transformation. She argues that the persecution of witches was not superstitious irrationality but a deliberate campaign to destroy women's control over reproduction and healing, to enforce new disciplinary regimes on the emerging proletariat, and to appropriate communal lands and resources. The book traces how the enclosure of the commons dispossessed rural populations while the enclosure of women's bodies through persecution, marriage law, and the regulation of sexuality created the unpaid domestic labor on which capitalist production depends. Federici draws on Marx while criticizing his neglect of gender and reproduction; she engages feminist theory while insisting on materialist analysis. The book has become foundational for understanding the relationship between capitalism and patriarchy, influencing movements from reproductive justice to anti-globalization. Federici writes with polemical energy, combining historical scholarship with political urgency, showing how the origins of modern economic systems implicated violence against women that continues in new forms.