Patricia Anderson Dispelling popular conceptions that view the Victorian era as sexually prudish or repressive, a lighthearted reexamination explains that Victorian sexuality was carefully nurtured, fashionable, and pervasive. National ad/promo.

Beth Bailey Sex in the Heartland is the story of the sexual revolution in a small university town in the quintessential heartland state of Kansas. Bypassing the oft-told tales of radicals and revolutionaries on either coast, Beth Bailey argues that the revolution was forged in towns and cities alike, as "ordinary" people struggled over the boundaries of public and private sexual behavior in postwar America.

Bailey fundamentally challenges contemporary perceptions of the revolution as simply a triumph of free love and gay lib. Rather, she explores the long-term and mainstream changes in American society, beginning in the economic and social dislocations of World War II and the explosion of mass media and communication, which aided and abetted the sexual upheaval of the 1960s. Focusing on Lawrence, Kansas, we discover the intricacies and depth of a transformation that was nurtured at the grass roots.

Americans used the concept of revolution to make sense of social and sexual changes as they lived through them. Everything from the birth control pill and counterculture to Civil Rights, was conflated into "the revolution," an accessible but deceptive simplification, too easy to both glorify and vilify. Bailey untangles the radically different origins, intentions, and outcomes of these events to help us understand their roles and meanings for sex in contemporary America. She argues that the sexual revolution challenged and partially overturned a system of sexual controls based on oppression, inequality, and exploitation, and created new models of sex and gender relations that have shaped our society in powerful and positive ways.

Eric Berkowitz The “raging frenzy” of the sex drive, to use Plato’s phrase, has always defied control. However, that’s not to say that the Sumerians, Victorians, and every civilization in between and beyond have not tried, wielding their most formidable weapon: the law. At any given point in time, some forms of sex were condoned while others were punished mercilessly. Jump forward or backward a century or two (and often far less than that), and the harmless fun of one time period becomes the gravest crime in another. Sex and Punishment tells the story of the struggle throughout the millennia to regulate the most powerful engine of human behavior.

Writer and lawyer Eric Berkowitz uses flesh-and-blood cases—much flesh and even more blood—to evoke the entire sweep of Western sex law, from the savage impalement of an ancient Mesopotamian adulteress to the imprisonment of Oscar Wilde in 1895 for “gross indecency.” The cast of Sex and Punishment is as varied as the forms taken by human desire itself: royal mistresses, gay charioteers, medieval transvestites, lonely goat-lovers, prostitutes of all stripes, London rent boys. Each of them had forbidden sex, and each was judged—and justice, as Berkowitz shows, rarely had much to do with it.

With the light touch of a natural storyteller, Berkowitz spins these tales and more, going behind closed doors to reveal the essential history of human desire.

Patricia Bizzell, Bruce Herzberg A new kind of multicultural composition reader that focuses on contact zones — historical moments when contending groups have negotiated across boundaries of race, class, gender, and ideology — by offering 6 casebooks that explore conflicts in American history. Assignment sequences and research kits are included at the end of each unit.

John Boswell

Susie Bright

Susie Bright

Susie Bright A close-up look at the most important sexual issues of modern American society examines such topics as sex online, the private lives of political candidates, abortion, AIDS, V-chips, teen pregnancy, and more, calling for a freer, more honest understanding of human sexuality. 75,000 first printing. Tour.

Susie Bright Lust brings out the liar in everyone. Every erection has Pinocchio written up and down its length—yes, everybody wants to be REAL, a real boy, an honest woman, unafraid and upright—but then desire, the ultimate honesty, does us in. Desire doesn't give a whit about shame. Our secrets, our exaggerations and distractions, it's all just a lot of twisting in the wind as far as sex is concerned—what we want WILL come out.

"Is our sexuality a basic, good, and precious thing that somehow became terribly misunderstood? Or is there something really evil out there in Sex Land that attaches itself to our libidos and is only held back by vigilance and caution?" asks Susie Bright in her bestselling book The Sexual State of the Union. Bright pushes the borders of propriety until they blur and become irrelevant in the face of our inherent need to touch and be touched. With candor and passion, Susie Bright proves that sexual knowledge can indeed be salvation and inspiration.

Susie Bright Lust brings out the liar in everyone. Every erection has Pinocchio written up and down its length—yes, everybody wants to be REAL, a real boy, an honest woman, unafraid and upright—but then desire, the ultimate honesty, does us in. Desire doesn't give a whit about shame. Our secrets, our exaggerations and distractions, it's all just a lot of twisting in the wind as far as sex is concerned—what we want WILL come out.

"Is our sexuality a basic, good, and precious thing that somehow became terribly misunderstood? Or is there something really evil out there in Sex Land that attaches itself to our libidos and is only held back by vigilance and caution?" asks Susie Bright in her bestselling book The Sexual State of the Union. Bright pushes the borders of propriety until they blur and become irrelevant in the face of our inherent need to touch and be touched. With candor and passion, Susie Bright proves that sexual knowledge can indeed be salvation and inspiration.

Ove Brusendorff, Poul Henningsen Historical treatment of erotic art from days of classic greece until the French Revolution including illustrations

Ove Brusendorff, Poul Henningsen Historical treatment of erotic art from days of classic greece until the French Revolution including illustrations

Doreen Caldwell

Hector Carrillo The Night Is Young takes us past the stereotypes of macho hombres and dark-eyed señoritas to reveal the complex nature of sexuality in modern-day Mexico. Drawing on field research conducted in Guadalajara, Mexico's second-largest city, Héctor Carrillo shows how modernization, globalization, and other social changes have affected a wide range of hetero- and homosexual practices and identities.

Carrillo finds that young Mexicans today grapple in a variety of ways with two competing tendencies. On the one hand, many seek to challenge traditional ideas and values they find limiting. But they also want to maintain a sense of Mexico's cultural distinctiveness, especially in relation to the United States. For example, while Mexicans are well aware of the dangers of unprotected sex, they may also prize the surrender to sexual passion, even in casual sexual encounters—an attitude which stems from the strong values placed on collective life, spontaneity, and an openness toward intimacy. Because these expectations contrast sharply with messages about individuality, planning, and overt negotiation commonly promoted in global public health efforts, Carrillo argues that they demand a new approach to AIDS prevention education in Mexico.

A Mexican native, Carrillo has written an exceptionally insightful and accessible study of the relations among sexuality, social change, and AIDS prevention in Mexico. Anyone concerned with the changing place of sexuality in a modern and increasingly globalized world will profit greatly from The Night Is Young.

John D'Emilio, Estelle B. Freedman The first full length study of the history of sexuality in America, Intimate Matters offers trenchant insights into the sexual behavior of Americans, from colonial times to today. D'Emilio and Freedman give us a deeper understanding of how sexuality has dramatically influenced politics and culture throughout our history.

"The book John D'Emilio co-wrote with Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters, was cited by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy when, writing for a majority of court on July 26, he and his colleagues struck down a Texas law criminalizing sodomy. The decision was widely hailed as a victory for gay rights—and it derived in part, according to Kennedy's written comments, from the information he gleaned from D'Emilio's book, which traces the history of American perspectives on sexual relationships from the nation's founding through the present day. The justice mentioned Intimate Matters specifically in the court's decision."—Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune

"Fascinating. . . . [D'Emilio and Freedman] marshall their material to chart a gradual but decisive shift in the way Americans have understood sex and its meaning in their lives." —Barbara Ehrenreich, New York Times Book Review

"[With] comprehensiveness and care . . . D'Emilio and Freedman have surveyed the sexual patters for an entire nation across four centuries." —Martin Bauml Duberman, Nation

"Intimate Matters is comprehensive, meticulous and intelligent." —Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World

"This book is remarkable. . . . [Intimate Matters] is bound to become the definitive survey of American sexual history for years to come." —Roy Porter, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences

John D'Emilio, Estelle B. Freedman, Estelle B. Freedman an The first full length study of the history of sexuality in America, Intimate Matters offers trenchant insights into the sexual behavior of Americans, from colonial times to today. D'Emilio and Freedman give us a deeper understanding of how sexuality has dramatically influenced politics and culture throughout our history.

"The book John D'Emilio co-wrote with Estelle B. Freedman, Intimate Matters, was cited by Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy when, writing for a majority of court on July 26, he and his colleagues struck down a Texas law criminalizing sodomy. The decision was widely hailed as a victory for gay rights—and it derived in part, according to Kennedy's written comments, from the information he gleaned from D'Emilio's book, which traces the history of American perspectives on sexual relationships from the nation's founding through the present day. The justice mentioned Intimate Matters specifically in the court's decision."—Julia Keller, Chicago Tribune

"Fascinating. . . . [D'Emilio and Freedman] marshall their material to chart a gradual but decisive shift in the way Americans have understood sex and its meaning in their lives." —Barbara Ehrenreich, New York Times Book Review

"With comprehensiveness and care . . . D'Emilio and Freedman have surveyed the sexual patterns for an entire nation across four centuries." —Martin Bauml Duberman, Nation

"Intimate Matters is comprehensive, meticulous and intelligent." —Jonathan Yardley, Washington Post Book World

"This book is remarkable. . . . [Intimate Matters] is bound to become the definitive survey of American sexual history for years to come." —Roy Porter, Journal of the History of the Behavioral Sciences

Riane Eisler The legacy ofthe sacred feminine

The Chalice and the Blade tells a new story of our cultural origins. It showsthat warfare and the war of the sexes are neither divinely nor biologicallyordained. It provides verification that a better future is possible—and is in factfirmly rooted in the haunting dramas of what happened in our past.

Albert, Ph. D. Ellis

Eurydice Satyricon USA is a groundbreaking tour of America's contemporary sexual landscape, Written by a young woman who has already been called "the most compelling writer of sex in the English language." Like Petronius, the ancient Roman writer she takes as her model, Eurydice presents a firsthand account of the chaos of human sexuality in all its kinky, confused, and transgressive expressions. With a style that combines erudition, wit, and hipness, and audaciously draws on both the factual authority of journalism and the atmospheric license of fiction, Eurydice transports us inside the nightmarish, breathtaking realms of dungeons and bloodletting clubs, cross-dressing conferences, supersized strip emporiums, as well as military bases and Catholic monasteries. In one chapter she accompanies a sex addict on a voracious nightlong escapade, in the next she meets with men and women who claim to have ongoing sexual relations with aliens, in another she describes the bone-chilling desires of neighborhood necrophiliacs.

Her aim is to understand these people who are drawn to the farthest sexual "fringe." On her journeys, Eurydice learns that, in fact, they are well-educated middle- to upper-class professional Americans. They are housewives and stockbrokers, college students and grandparents, doctors and priests. Drawing on hundreds of interviews, Eurydice probes people's dual lives to answer some fundamental questions: Why is our society simultaneously obsessed with and afraid of sex? How does this widespread sexual eccentricity coexist with our puritanical hysteria about sexual harassment and "moral turpitude"? Are we today more liberated or actually more confined than in the past? Rules and stereotypes, Eurydice reports, are emerging in new forms. As she writes: "What I encountered were mostly ancient, confining sexual mores going by new, emancipatory names." Daring and ferociously smart, Eurydice dives into the "deviant" lifestyle to untangle the contradictions of our modern morality. A unique blend of reportage, memoir, extensive research, and incisive analysis, Satyricon USA is a compelling portrait of a nation in the midst of redefining its sexual issues and needs.

Michel Foucault The author turns his attention to sex and the reasons why we are driven constantly to analyze and discuss it. An iconoclastic explanation of modern sexual history.

Michel Foucault The author turns his attention to sex and the reasons why we are driven constantly to analyze and discuss it. An iconoclastic explanation of modern sexual history.

Michel Foucault In this sequel to The History of Sexuality, Volume I: An Introduction, the brilliantly original French thinker who died in 1984 gives an analysis of how the ancient Greeks perceived sexuality.

Throughout The Uses of Pleasure Foucault analyzes an irresistible array of ancient Greek texts on eroticism as he tries to answer basic questions: How in the West did sexual experience become a moral issue? And why were other appetites of the body, such as hunger, and collective concerns, such as civic duty, not subjected to the numberless rules and regulations and judgments that have defined, if not confined, sexual behavior?

F Gonzalez-Crussi [Gonzalez-Crussi] is content to follow his argument where it leads, making points along the way. To follow his fancy, too, although it always comes circling back to the topic in hand. One of the pleasures the book affords, in fact, is the chance to watch the unexpected but always cogent movements of his mind . . . The book is as impressive as its predecessors. Dr. Gonzalez-Crussi is never less than shrewd and entertaining; he has an exceptionally well-stocked mind, and he frequently achieves something that is not too much to call wisdom" -John Gross, The New York Times

Chris Gordon Read about the antics of the Egyptian Pharoah who was a serial castrator (his collection totaling over 13,000); about the ancient Syrian queen who created ‘a multitude of eunuchs’ through her jealousy; about the paramedic who regularly fattened her dog up with hearty meals of adolescents’ testicles; and about the scissor-happy wife who cut off her husband’s prize asset and threw it out of the window, only to have a duck pick it up in its bill and waddle off with it...

Did you know?
- In medieval times one of the few grounds for divorce was sexual incompetence, which had to be demonstrated before a court
- In Romania men can be refused entry into the Orthodox priesthood if their members "don’t reach the minimum length set down in the rules"
- In 1980, the hoteliers of Majorca claimed that honeymooners were costing them over $1 1/2 million a year in beds damaged by their energetic amorous activities
- Dr. John Harvey Kellogg proclaimed his first breakfast cereal product as an antidote to masturbation

The Book of Weird Sex is full of quirky sexual trivia, both ancient and modern

John Guy Thanks to Showtime’s hit series The Tudors, (the fourth season is set to air in Spring 2010), interest in the perennially popular Royal family is at an all-time high, and this enlightening work will appeal to the many viewers eager to learn more about them.  John Guy provides the most authoritative overview of this age in British history, offering a compelling account of the political, religious, and economic changes that occurred under Henry VIII and Elizabeth I.  In addition, Guy comprehensively reassesses the reigns of Henry VII, Edward VI, and Philip and Mary.

Pamela Haag “Inthis timely and thought-provoking analysis of modern coupledom, PamelaHaag& paints a vivid tableau of the ‘semi-happy’ couple. Written withwit and aplomb, this page turner will instigate an insurrection against ourmarital complacency.” —Esther Perel, author of Matingin Captivity

Writtenwith the persuasive power of Naomi Wolf and the analytical skills of Susan Faludi, Pamela Haag’s provocative but sympathetic look atthe state of marriage today answers—and goes beyond—the question many of us are asking: "Is this all there is?"

Michael C. Hall, Chris Ryan Sex Tourism examines the issues which emerge from sex worker-client interactions and from tourists visiting 'sex destinations'. It is a comprehensive summary of past research by academics and original primary and secondary research by the authors and has examples from Asia, Australasia and the USA.

The authors have generated new models to show different dimensions of sex tourism, which normalise at least some components of the sex industry, and represent a new way of looking at sex tourism by challenging the preconceived perceptions that some people have of sex tourism or confirm the impression of others. Sex Tourism looks at issues of importance to those working in tourism, women's studies, gender studies and social change.

Eleanor Herman Throughout the centuries, royal mistresses have been worshiped, feared, envied, and reviled. They set the fashions, encouraged the arts, and, in some cases, ruled nations. Eleanor Herman's Sex with Kings takes us into the throne rooms and bedrooms of Europe's most powerful monarchs. Alive with flamboyant characters, outrageous humor, and stirring poignancy, this glittering tale of passion and politics chronicles five hundred years of scintillating women and the kings who loved them.

Curiously, the main function of a royal mistress was not to provide the king with sex but with companionship. Forced to marry repulsive foreign princesses, kings sought solace with women of their own choice. And what women they were! From Madame de Pompadour, the famous mistress of Louis XV, who kept her position for nineteen years despite her frigidity, to modern-day Camilla Parker-Bowles, who usurped none other than the glamorous Diana, Princess of Wales.

The successful royal mistress made herself irreplaceable. She was ready to converse gaily with him when she was tired, make love until all hours when she was ill, and cater to his every whim. Wearing a mask of beaming delight over any and all discomforts, she was never to be exhausted, complaining, or grief-stricken.

True, financial rewards for services rendered were of royal proportions — some royal mistresses earned up to $200 million in titles, pensions, jewels, and palaces. Some kings allowed their mistresses to exercise unlimited political power. But for all its grandeur, a royal court was a scorpion's nest of insatiable greed, unquenchable lust, and vicious ambition. Hundreds of beautiful women vied to unseat the royal mistress. Many would suffer the slings and arrows of negative public opinion, some met with tragic ends and were pensioned off to make room for younger women. But the royal mistress often had the last laugh, as she lived well and richly off the fruits of her "sins."

From the dawn of time, power has been a mighty aphrodisiac. With diaries, personal letters, and diplomatic dispatches, Eleanor Herman's trailblazing research reveals the dynamics of sex and power, rivalry and revenge, at the most brilliant courts of Europe. Wickedly witty and endlessly entertaining, Sex with Kings is a chapter of women's history that has remained unwritten — until now.

Katie Hickman During the course of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries a small group of women rose from impoverished obscurity to positions of great power, independence and wealth. In doing so they took control of their lives — and those of other people — and made the world do their will.

Men went to great lengths in desperate attempts to gain and retain a courtesan's favors, but she was always courted for far more than sex. In an age in which women were generally not well educated she was often unusually literate and literary, and courted for her conversation as well as her physical company. Courtesans were extremely accomplished and exerted a powerful influence as leaders of fashion and society. They were not received at court, but inhabited their own parallel world — the demimonde — complete with its own hierarchies, etiquette and protocol. They were queens of fashion, linguists, musicians, accomplished at political intrigue and, of course, possessors of great erotic gifts. Even to be seen in public with one of the great courtesans was a much-envied achievement.

In this riveting social biography, Katie Hickman focuses on five outstanding women — Sophia Baddeley, Elizabeth Armistead, Harriette Wilson, Cora Pearl and Catherine Walters — each of whose lives exemplifies the dazzling existence of the courtesan. She reveals their extraordinary exploits — including their stints in Paris, New York and California — and offers insights into the glamorous history of courtesan life.

Tom Hickman The story of the popularization of sex throughout the twentieth century.

Frank A. Hoffmann

Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz A lively, scholarly, and often startling exploration of nineteenth-century American attitudes toward sexuality—what we felt, thought, wrote, and said about the human body; about love, lust, intercourse, masturbation, contraception, and abortion; about the power of sexual words and images.

Horowitz shows us a many-voiced America in which an earthy acceptance of desire and sexual expression collided with the prohibitions broadcast from the pulpit and the printed page by evangelical Christian elements. She describes the new sensibility of agitators like Victoria Woodhull placing sex at the center of life, visionaries like Robert Owen and Frances Wright espousing free love, faddists like Sylvester Graham obsessing about the dangers of masturbation, a country physician writing the first scientifically grounded book on contraception, the lively new commerce in erotica—including newspapers such as the Sunday Flash and, most famous, the National Police Gazette (which featured a legal way to write explicitly about sex). We see a rising opposition instigated by conservative New Yorkers who feared the corruption of young male clerks living in boardinghouses, deprived of parental influence. And we see how this movement led into an era of suppression—pitting Anthony Comstock, who succeeded in banning sexual subject matter from the mails, against the new dissenters committed to free speech—an early battle of the national cultural war that continues to this day.

Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz From bawdy talk to evangelical sermons, and from celebrations of free love to prosecutions for obscenity, nineteenth-century America encompassed a far broader range of sexual attitudes and ideas than the Victorian stereotype would have us believe. In Rereading Sex, Helen Lefkowitz Horowitz lets us listen to the national conversation about sex in the nineteenth century and hear voices that resonate in our own time.

Probing court records, pamphlets, and “sporting men’s” magazines, Horowitz shows us a many-voiced America in which an earthy acceptance of desire and sexual expression collided with prohibitions broadcast from the pulpit. We encounter fascinating reformers like Victoria Woodhull, who advocated free love and became the first woman to run for president; faddists like Sylvester Graham, who obsessed about the dangers of masturbation; and moral crusaders like Anthony Comstock, who succeeded in banning sexual subject matter from the mails. We also see how newspapers like the Sunday Flash treated prostitutes like celebrities and how the National Police Gazette found a legal way to write about explicity about sex through crime reports that read like gossip columns. Employing an encyclopedic knowledge artfully rendered, Horowitz brings to the fore a wide spectrum of attitudes and a debate echoed in the culture wars of today.

Bernhardt J Hurwood

Abbott Karen Step into the perfumed parlors of the Everleigh Club, the most famous brothel in American history-and the catalyst for a culture war that rocked the nation. Operating in Chicago's notorious Levee district at the dawn of the last century, the Club's proprietors, two aristocratic sisters named Minna and Ada Everleigh, welcomed moguls and actors, senators and athletes, foreign dignitaries and literary icons, into their stately double mansion, where thirty stunning Everleigh "butterflies" awaited their arrival. Courtesans named Doll, Suzy Poon Tang, and Brick Top devoured raw meat to the delight of Prince Henry of Prussia and recited poetry for Theodore Dreiser. Whereas lesser madams pocketed most of a harlot's earnings and kept a "whipper" on staff to mete out discipline, the Everleighs made sure their girls dined on gourmet food, were examined by an honest physician, and even tutored in the literature of Balzac. Not everyone appreciated the sisters' attempts to elevate the industry. Rival Levee madams hatched numerous schemes to ruin the Everleighs, including an attempt to frame them for the death of department store heir Marshall Field, Jr. But the sisters' most daunting foes were the Progressive Era reformers, who sent the entire country into a frenzy with lurid tales of "white slavery"—the allegedly rampant practice of kidnapping young girls and forcing them into brothels. This furor shaped America's sexual culture and had repercussions all the way to the White House, including the formation of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. With a cast of characters that includes Jack Johnson, John Barrymore, John D. Rockefeller, Jr., William Howard Taft, "Hinky Dink" Kenna, and Al Capone, Sin in the Second City is Karen Abbott's colorful, nuanced portrait of the iconic Everleigh sisters, their world-famous Club, and the perennial clash between our nation's hedonistic impulses and Puritanical roots.

Laura Kipnis Who would dream of being against love? No one.

Love is, as everyone knows, a mysterious and all-controlling force, with vast power over our thoughts and life decisions.

But is there something a bit worrisome about all this uniformity of opinion? Is this the one subject about which no disagreement will be entertained, about which one truth alone is permissible? Consider that the most powerful organized religions produce the occasional heretic; every ideology has its apostates; even sacred cows find their butchers. Except for love.

Hence the necessity for a polemic against it. A polemic is designed to be the prose equivalent of a small explosive device placed under your E-Z-Boy lounger. It won’t injure you (well not severely); it’s just supposed to shake things up and rattle a few convictions.

Edward O. Laumann, John H. Gagnon, Robert T. Michael, Stuart Michaels The Social Organization of Sexuality reports the complete results of the nation's most comprehensive representative survey of sexual practices in the general adult population of the United States. This highly detailed portrait of sex in America and its social context and implications has established a new and original scientific orientation to the study of sexual behavior.

"The most comprehensive U.S. sex survey ever." —USA Today

"The findings from this survey, the first in decades to provide detailed insights about the sexual behavior of a representative sample of Americans, will have a profound impact on how policy makers tackle a number of pressing health problems." —Alison Bass, The Boston Globe

"A fat, sophisticated, and sperm-freezingly serious volume. . . . This book is not in the business of giving us a good time. It is in the business of asking three thousand four hundred and thirty-two other people whether they had a good time, and exactly what they did to make it so good." —Anthony Lane, The New Yorker

New York Times Book Review Notable Book of the Year

Catherine A. Lutz "An outstanding contribution to psychological anthropology. Its excellent ethnography and its provocative theory make it essential reading for all those concerned with the understanding of human emotions."—Karl G. Heider, American Anthropologist

Thomas Maier In Masters of Sex, critically acclaimed biographer Thomas Maier offers an unprecedented look at William Masters and Virginia Johnson, their pioneering studies of intimacy, and the sexual revolution they inspired. Masters and Johnson began their secret studies in a small Midwest laboratory, and soon became the nation’s top experts on sex. Over the course of more than forty years, they analyzed and explained the secrets of orgasm, emotional fulfillment, and sexual dysfunction. But they divorced after twenty years amid a clash of success, betrayal, and jealousies.

Weaving interviews with the notoriously private William Masters and the ambitious Virginia Johnson, Maier offers a titillating portrait of the legendary couple. Entertaining, revealing, and beautifully told, this groundbreaking book sheds light on the eternal mysteries of desire and intimacy, and their complicated roles in the American psyche.

Daniel P. Mannix The compelling story of the rise and fall of a shocking secret society. In the ruined abbeys and elaborately decorated caves of England, the notorious Hellfire Club help meetings that shocked and terrified the countryside. London madams scoured the city for young girls to supply the club. Rakes flocked to meetings. Yet it was typical of late eighteenth century England that the club's members included famous men from the worlds of art and politics, even the then Prime Minister. The list of members could almost be mistaken for the "honours list" of the most eminent men of the day and when news of the clubs activities leaked out, it caused the biggest political scandal in British history. Brilliant, perverse, equally capable of elaborately obscene jests and the intricacies of paliamentary politics, the members of the Hellfire Club were the most astonishing men of their time. Since it's inception over two hundred years ago, the record of their revels has fascinated and repulsed the world.

Paolo Mantegazza The author's general aim in this volume is to present a cursive sexual history of man, based on anthropological principles. Contents: celebration of puberty, erotic education; debauchery and modesty in the human races; the embrace and its forms, racial arts of love, deflorations; aids for the embrace, savage and civilized contrivances; perversions of love among the various races; mutilation of the sex organs; conquest of women; purchase of women and men; natural selection of a mate; limitations on choice, incest; marriage contract, fidelity and adultery; position of women among the many races of mankind; monogamy, polygamy, polyandry, harem life, concubinage; male and female prostitution; anthropological theory of sex.

Legs McNeil, Gillian McCain A Time Out and Daily News Top Ten Book of the Year upon its initial release, Please Kill Me is the first oral history of the most nihilist of all pop movements. Iggy Pop, Danny Fields, Dee Dee and Joey Ramone, Malcom McLaren, Jim Carroll, and scores of other famous and infamous punk figures lend their voices to this definitive account of that outrageous, explosive era. From its origins in the twilight years of Andy Warhol’s New York reign to its last gasps as eighties corporate rock, the phenomenon known as punk is scrutinized, eulogized, and idealized by the people who were there and who made it happen.

Margaret Mead First published in 1935, Sex & Temperament is a fascinating and brilliant anthropological study of the intimate lives of three New Guinea tribes from infancy to adulthood. Focusing on the gentle, mountain-dwelling Arapesh, the fierce, cannibalistic Mundugumor, and the graceful headhunters of Tchambuli — Mead advances the theory that many so-called masculine and feminine characteristics are not based on fundamental sex differences but reflect the cultural conditioning of different societies. This edition, prepared for the centennial of Mead's birth, features introductions by Helen Fisher and Mead's daughter, Mary Catherine Bateson.

A precursor to Mead's illuminating Male & Female, Sex & Temperament lays the groundwork for her lifelong study of gender differences.

Robert T. Michael, John H. Gagnon, Edward O. Laumann, Gina Kolata Based on interviews with 3,432 adults, a group of social scientists offers a detailed, accurate report on Americans' sexual habits, including how frequently they have sexual intercourse, what they do in bed, and how many people are homosexual. 75,000 first printing. Tour.

Camille Paglia From ancient Egypt through the nineteenth century, Sexual Personae explores the provocative connections between art and pagan ritual; between Emily Dickinson and the Marquis de Sade; between Lord Byron and Elvis Presley. It ultimately challenges the cultural assumptions of both conservatives and traditional liberals. 47 photographs.

Camille Paglia From ancient Egypt through the nineteenth century, Sexual Personae explores the provocative connections between art and pagan ritual; between Emily Dickinson and the Marquis de Sade; between Lord Byron and Elvis Presley. It ultimately challenges the cultural assumptions of both conservatives and traditional liberals. 47 photographs.

Ferrante Pallavicino This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages.

Jeremy Pascall, Clyde Jeavons

Tony Perrottet Sex and travel have always been intertwined, and never more so than on the classic Grand Tour of Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Today the Continent is still littered with salacious remnants of that golden age, where secret boudoirs, notorious dungeons, and forbidden artifacts lured travelers all the way from London to Capri. 

In The Sinner’s Grand Tour, celebrated historian and travel writer Tony Perrottet sets off to discover a string of legendary sites and relics that are still kept far from public view. In southern France, an ancient text leads him inside the château of the Marquis de Sade, now owned by fashion icon Pierre Cardin. In Paris, an 1883 prostitute guide helps him discover the Belle Époque fantasy brothel Le Chabanais and the lost “sex chair” of King Edward VII. Renaissance documents in the Vatican Secret Archives point the way to the Pope’s very own apartments in Vatican City, wherein lies the fabled Stufetta del Bibbiena, a pornography-covered bathroom painted by Raphael in 1516. 

With his unique blend of original research, sharp wit, and hilarious anecdotes, Perrottet brings us a romping travel adventure through the scandalous backrooms of historical Europe.

Tony Perrottet Sex and travel have always been intertwined, and never more so than on the classic Grand Tour of Europe in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Today the Continent is still littered with salacious remnants of that golden age, where secret boudoirs, notorious dungeons, and forbidden artifacts lured travelers all the way from London to Capri. 

In The Sinner’s Grand Tour, celebrated historian and travel writer Tony Perrottet sets off to discover a string of legendary sites and relics that are still kept far from public view. In southern France, an ancient text leads him inside the château of the Marquis de Sade, now owned by fashion icon Pierre Cardin. In Paris, an 1883 prostitute guide helps him discover the Belle Époque fantasy brothel Le Chabanais and the lost “sex chair” of King Edward VII. Renaissance documents in the Vatican Secret Archives point the way to the Pope’s very own apartments in Vatican City, wherein lies the fabled Stufetta del Bibbiena, a pornography-covered bathroom painted by Raphael in 1516. 

With his unique blend of original research, sharp wit, and hilarious anecdotes, Perrottet brings us a romping travel adventure through the scandalous backrooms of historical Europe.

James R. Petersen Century of Sex, The: Playboy's History of the Sexual Revolution 1 by Petersen, James R.. 8vo. 1st ptg.

James R. Petersen Century of Sex, The: Playboy's History of the Sexual Revolution 1 by Petersen, James R.. 8vo. 1st ptg.

Marty Klein Ph.D. Americans are more vulnerable today than ever to anxiety about sexual danger, to believing that their sexuality is not "normal" or moral, and to laws and public policies that restrict their rights, criminalize their consenting behavior, and confuse and miseducate their children. In the second edition of America's War on Sex: The Continuing Attack on Law, Lust, and Liberty, psychologist, sex therapist, and courtroom expert witness Marty Klein sets the record straight and uncovers how the "Sexual Disaster Industry" works—a powerful social and political propaganda machine that is supported by the very citizens it victimizes.

This book analyzes eight "battlegrounds" in which America's War on Sex is being fought and examines how each one is the focus of an unrelenting struggle to regulate sexuality in direct contradiction to our Constitutional guarantees, scientific fact, and the needs of average Americans. Klein places these various attacks on our rights in historical context, explains how the money and political power are coordinated from the same sources, and shows how the Religious Right inflames Americans' anxiety about sexuality even as it proposes repressive schemes to reduce that anxiety. This book tackles a sensitive and volatile topic head-on, addressing how the political, social, historical, religious, and emotional issues surrounding public policy interfaces with sexuality as no other work has before.

Roger Blake, PhD

Morris Ploscowe

John Portmann Intriguing, illuminating, and occasionally unsettling, John Portmann gathers an on-target collection of great writers on transgressions large and small. Heres Swift on murder, Wilde on deceit, Freud on breaking the golden rule, Seneca on suicide, and moreone for each of the Ten Commandments.

William J. Robinson This book is a facsimile reprint and may contain imperfections such as marks, notations, marginalia and flawed pages.

William J. Robinson The Last Word On The Subject.

John Roeburt

Katie Roiphe Katie Roiphe’s stimulating work has made her one of the most talked about cultural critics of her generation. Now this bracing young writer delves deeply into one of the most layered of subjects: marriage. Drawn in part from the private memoirs, personal correspondence, and long-forgotten journals of the British literary community from 1910 to the Second World War, here are seven “marriages à la mode”—each rising to the challenge of intimate relations in more or less creative ways. Jane Wells, the wife of H.G., remained his rock, despite his decade-long relationship with Rebecca West (among others). Katherine Mansfield had an irresponsible, childlike romance with her husband, John Middleton Murry, that collapsed under the strain of real-life problems. Vera Brittain and George Gordon Catlin spent years in a “semidetached” marriage (he in America, she in England). Vanessa Bell maintained a complicated harmony with the painter Duncan Grant, whom she loved, and her husband, Clive. And her sister Virginia Woolf, herself no stranger to marital particularities, sustained a brilliant running commentary on the most intimate details of those around her.

Every chapter revolves around a crisis that occurred in each of these marriages—as serious as life-threatening illness or as seemingly innocuous as a slightly tipsy dinner table conversation—and how it was resolved…or not resolved. In these portraits, Roiphe brilliantly evokes what are, as she says, “the fluctuations and shifts in attraction, the mysteries of lasting affection, the endurance and changes in love, and the role of friendship in marriage.” The deeper mysteries at stake in all relationships.

Hillel Schwartz

Julia R. Schwendinger, Herman Schwendinger The authors review popular, legal and scientific explanations of rape and offer a new and persuasive approach to understanding violence against women. They show that rape is not common to all societies and conclude that it is linked to general levels of sexual inequality, sexism and violence. It is seen as a consequence of the development of capitalism. In supporting their thesis, the authors present material that will be of great interest to anthropologists, criminologists, political economists, and people in women's studies.

`This is the best book available on rape and will remain so for the forseeable future. It is inordinately well written, brilliantly conceived, and imaginatively researched...I wholeheartedly recommen

David Steinberg This book is a wake-up call to the erotic spirit in all of us. Drawing on the insights of counselors and the wisdom of poets, The Erotic Impulse serves up a feast of thoughts, feelings, findings, and fantasies about our erotic nature.

Janice E. Stockard MARRIAGE IN CULTURE is an innovative text that makes accessible to a broad audience the rich insights anthropology provides into the meaning of marriage in different cultures. Marriage practices in the four societies discussed contrast with each other in dramatic ways-from number of spouses to the meaning of postmarital residence arrangements. The author provides compelling ethnographic accounts of the !Kung San (Bushman), Chinese, Iroquois, and Tibetan societies to familiarize students with anthropologists' unique perspective on marriage in culture. Each chapter places marriage within the context of the whole culture, exploring the ways in which different economic, political, family, and gender systems shape the practice and meaning of marriage. The author makes an original contribution by highlighting the importance of postmarital residence in defining different experiences of marriage for husbands and wives in each society.

Gay Talese The provocative classic work newly updated

An intimate personal odyssey across America's changing sexual landscape

When first published, Gay Talese's 1981 groundbreaking work, Thy Neighbor's Wife, shocked a nation with its powerful, eye-opening revelations about the sexual activities and proclivities of the American public in the era before AIDS. A marvel of journalistic courage and craft, the book opened a window into a new world built on a new moral foundation, carrying the reader on a remarkable journey from the Playboy Mansion to the Supreme Court, to the backyards and bedrooms of suburbia—through the development of the porn industry, the rise of the "swinger" culture, the legal fight to define obscenity, and the daily sex lives of "ordinary" people. It is the book that forever changed the way Americans look at themselves and one another.

Reay Tannahill SEX IN HISTORY chronicles the pleasures- and perils- of the flesh from the time of mankind's distant ancestors to the modern day; from a sexual act which was bried, crude and purposeful, to the myriad varieties of contemporary sexual mores. Reay Tannahill's scholarly, yet accessible study ranges from the earliest form of contraception (one Egyptian concoction included crocodile dung) to some latter- day misconceptions about it- like the men who joined their lovers in taking the pill 'just to be on the safe side.' It surveys all manner of sexual practice, preference and position (the acrobatic 'wheelbarrow' position, the strenuous 'hovering butterflies' position...) and draws on souces as diverse as THE ADMIRABLE DISCOURSES OF THE PLAIN GIRL, the EXHIBTION OF FEMALE FLAGELLANTS, IMPORTANT MATTERS OF THE JADE CHAMBER and THE ROMANCE OF CHASTISEMENT. Whether writing on androgyny, courtly love, flagellation or zoophilia, Turkish eunuch's Greek dildoes, Taoist sex manuals or Japanses geisha girls, Reay Tannahill is consistently enlightening and entertaining.

Sallie. Tisdale

Antonio Vignali, Ian Frederick Moulton La Cazzaria is the most outspoken erotic text of the Italian Renaissance-a ribald dialogue about politics, sex, and desire. The book is remarkable for its frank discussions of sexuality and explicit homoeroticism-especially when compared to other writings of the period-and for its sophisticated treatment of sexual and political power.

Alexander Walker

Irving Wallace, Amy Wallace, David Wallechinsky, Sylvia Wallace This encyclopedia looks at the sexual habits, deviations and quirks of nearly 200 famous, notorious or otherwise distinguished people from all walks of life. Each entry describes the subject's fame and achievements, and within this context examines their sexual activities. The entries are preceded by over 50 lists of sexual characteristics in which the subjects of the biographies are listed under such headings as mother-fixated, masochists and sadists, and endurance and staying power. Characters featured include Henry VIII, Napoleon Bonaparte, Catherine the Great, Marilyn Monroe, Janis Joplin and Mozart.

Kevin White The century-long struggle over the boundaries of sexual propriety and morality is the subject of Kevin White's rich account of American attitudes toward sex. Mr. White explores this great and continuing cultural conflict in the full context of Americans' ambiguous dialogue with their Victorian legacy. Incisive and authoritative....A remarkably nuanced analysis of Americans' obsession with sex. —John C. Burnham, Ohio State University. A bold and engaging survey...highly readable. —William L. O'Neill. American Ways Series.

Froma I. Zeitlin, John J. Winkler, David M. Halperin A dream in which a man has sex with his mother may promise him political or commercial success—according to dream interpreters of late antiquity, who, unlike modern Western analysts, would not necessarily have drawn conclusions from the dream about the dreamer's sexual psychology. Evidence of such shifts in perspective is leading scholars to reconsider in a variety of creative ways the history of sexuality. In these fifteen original essays, eminent cultural historians and classicists not only discuss sex, but demonstrate how norms, practices, and even the very definitions of what counts as sexual activity have varied significantly over time. Ancient Greece offers abundant evidence for a radically different set of sexual standards and behaviors from ours. Sex in ancient Hellenic culture assumed a variety of social and political meanings, whereas the modern development of a sex-centered model of personality now leads us to view sex as the key to understanding the individual. Drawing on both the Anglo-American tradition of cultural anthropology and the French tradition of les sciences humaines, these essays explore the iconography, politics, ethics, poetry, and medical practices that made sex in ancient Greece not a paradise of liberation but an exotic locale hardly recognizable to visitors from the modern world. In addition to the editors, the contributors to this volume are Peter Brown, Anne Carson, Franoise Frontisi-Ducroux, Maud W. Gleason, Ann Ellis Hanson, Franois Lissarrague, Nicole Loraux, Maurice Olender, S.R.F. Price, James Redfield, Giulia Sissa, and Jean-Pierre Vernant.