Banned from television by her most famous mentor, widowed by suicide, her career in free fall, Joan Rivers sat alone with a gun in her lap, contemplating ending it all, until her pet Yorkie jumped up and snapped her out of it. From those ashes she sold over a billion dollars in jewelry, reinvented the red carpet, and refused to ever apologize again.

This deep dive peels back the jewel-encrusted armor to find Joan Alexandra Molinsky, the self-described "meeskite" from Brooklyn who turned her deepest insecurities into the most lethal weapon in comedy. We trace how a Barnard-educated woman with no lane in 1960s entertainment invented her own myth, pioneered confessional stand-up, and pried open doors for every woman who followed.

• The fabricated origin stories she invented as survival tactics to demand respect in male-dominated rooms ...