BOOK DESCRIPTION
One of the New Yorker's Best Books of 2024 • A Washington Post Notable Book of 2024 • A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2024 • A 2025 finalist for the Lambda Literary Lammy Award in LGBTQ+ nonfiction
From an esteemed scholar, a richly textured, authoritative history of sex and sexuality in America―the first major account in three decades.
Our era is one of sexual upheaval. Roe v. Wade was overturned in the summer of 2022, school systems across the country are banning books with LGBTQ+ themes, and the notion of a “tradwife” is gaining adherents on the right while polyamory wins converts on the left. It may seem as though debates over sex are more intense than ever, but as acclaimed historian Rebecca L. Davis demonstrates in Fierce Desires, we should not be too surprised, because Americans have been arguing over which kinds of sex are “acceptable”―and which are not―since before the founding itself.
From the public floggings of fornicators in early New England to passionate same-sex love affairs in the 1800s and the crackdown on abortion providers in the 1870s, and from the movements for sexual liberation to the recent restrictions on access to gender affirming care, Davis presents a sweeping, engrossing, illuminating four-hundred-year account of this nation’s sexual past. Drawing on a wealth of sources, including legal records, erotica, and eighteenth-century romance novels, she recasts important episodes―Anthony Comstock’s crusade against smut among them―and, at the same time, unearths stories of little-remembered pioneers and iconoclasts, such as an indentured servant in colonial Virginia named Thomas/Thomasine Hall, Gay Liberation Front cofounder Kiyoshi Kuromiya, and postwar female pleasure activist Betty Dodson.
At the heart of the book is Davis’s argument that the concept of sexual identity is relatively novel, first appearing in the nineteenth century. Over the centuries, Americans have shifted from understanding sexual behaviors as reflections of personal preferences or values, such as those rooted in faith or culture, to defining sexuality as an essential part of what makes a person who they are. And at every step, legislators, police, activists, and bureaucrats attempted to regulate new sexual behaviors, transforming government in the process.
The most comprehensive account of America’s sexual past since John D’Emilio and Estelle Freedman’s 1988 classic, Intimate Matters, Davis’s magisterial work seeks to help us understand the turmoil of the present. It demonstrates how fiercely we have always valued our desires, and how far we are willing to go to defend them.
Revecca L. Davis (3/9/2024). Fierce Desires: A New Study of Sex and Sexuality in America. New York, NY: W.W. Norton & Company. First Edition. Hardcover. 480 pages. 35 illustrations.ISBN-13: 978-1-63149-657-8.
CONTENTS
(03) - Editorial
(04) - Guy A. Hayman, Introduction
(06) - Stanley M. Clark, Prelude To Better Sex
(12) - How Women Make Love To Men
(18) - Staff, Intercourse
(26) - Susan McFadden, Naked Encounter: sex at sensitivity group
(32) - Felicia Beamer. Bed,,, and The Liberated Woman
(44) - Michelle Haliloran, Wife-Swapping: The Modern Parlor Game
(50) - Alan Delamar, Racism In The Bedroom
(64) - William Syms, Group Marriage: Its Evolution, Essence and Future
(72) - WillIiam Billings, Girls Who Love Girls
(78) - Julia Barnright, Group Sex: Facts and Fantasies
BOOK DESCRIPTION
For more than a decade Steven and Iris Finz have interviewed men and women across America, asking them to reveal their most intimate fantasies - and their most sensual experiences - so they can share them with their readers. They've talked to ordinary housewives and hard-working husbands, confirmed bachelors, computer techies, nurses, ski instructors - people from every walk of life - to find out how they keep their sex fresh and exciting. Now, with the co-operation of their subjects they present twenty-seven of these uncensored interviews, some of the most erotic and scintillating tales ever recorded. Meet Roxanne, a sultry-voiced singer whose secret admirer - clad only in a mask - looks suspiciously like her husband. Then there's Bernie, a polite bus driver with a thing for wet T-shirts. Or Lionel: student, nude model, friend to undergraduates. And that's just the beginning. The stories in this book cover every kind of sexual fantasy, from old favourites like suburban swingers to new trends like cybersex. Definitely for mature readers only, this is the prescription everyone needs for a happier - and hotter - love life.
Featured
Jerilyn Marie Lewis (July, 1972). An Exploratory Study of an Alternate Family Structure: Multilateral Marriage.Thesis submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Home Economics at Northridge: California State University. ix+106 pages.
