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Petersen, James R. ListingsIf you cannot find what you want on this page, then please use our search feature to search all our listings. Click on Title to view full description
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CENTURY OF SEX: PLAYBOY'S HISTORY OF THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION, 1900-1999
Petersen, James R.
1999 9209 100 Years of Sexual Attitudes Though we have witnessed the first appearance of the bra, the Pill, the vibrator, Trojan condoms, the automobile, the motion picture, the television, and the Internet in these last 100 years, it may seem initially surprising that sex itself is not among the great inventions of the 20th century. Nor did the sexual revolution begin with the Beats of the 1950s, or the free-lovin' hippies of the 1960s. From the moment 1899 gave way to 1900, sex has been in a perpetual state of revolution in American culture, so much so that it would be accurate to say we have seen it reinvented. The Century of Sex, James R. Petersen's survey of sex in 20th-century America, is as much a social history of the sexual revolution as it is of sexual repression, suppression, censorship, and hypocrisy. To watch the revolution unfold is to chart a dance, the cha-cha to be exact. For every step forward, it has been shoved back two steps by rabid conservative groups through the years. Birth control pioneer Margaret Sanger had to contend with Anthony Comstock's unrelenting antivice campaign at the turn of the century. Hollywood had to endure the Production Code of the 1930s. And at the end of the century, no one can think about phone sex without recalling Kenneth Starr's salacious report on President Clinton's sexual proclivities. This story arguably begins with Ida Craddock, a member of the Free Love Movement, who wrote one of the earliest marriage manuals. Entitled "The Wedding Night," this instructional pamphlet for newlyweds distinguishes clitoral orgasms from vaginal ones and suggests that women "perform pelvic movements.riding your husband's organ.resembling the movements of the thread of a screw upon a screw." When Anthony Comstock, a special agent to the U.S. Post Office and secretary of the New York Society for the Suppression of Vice, caught wind of it, he had Craddock prosecuted in federal court for circulating "obscene literature." She committed suicide in 1902 before being sentenced for a crime she "did not commit." Comstock appointed himself national censor, and his reign of terror over the nation didn't end until the 1930s, when Margaret Sanger triumphed over him for the right to dispense birth control and Franklin Delano Roosevelt repealed Prohibition. But Comstock was far from the last of the puritans. In 1932, one of the fiercest censors, Joe Breen, inflicted Victorian principles on modern cinema and went on an anti-Semitic rampage, proclaiming that "Hollywood Jews" were a "rotten bunch of vile people with no respect for anything beyond the making of money." J. Edgar Hoover, the head of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, started his own campaign in the late 1930s, raiding "vice dens" in Baltimore, Atlantic City, Wilmington, and Philadelphia in an effort to blow up the "white slave trade." He reported to Congress in 1950 during Senator Joe McCarthy's "Red Scare" that he identified 406 "sex deviates in government service," spearheading one of the most virulent homophobic panics this nation has ever experienced. The Century of Sex explains how the city became the cultural epicenter of the 20th century, and with the advent of urban life came a sexual energy that was impossible to ignore. "The city itself changed sex. Crowded apartments filled with working men and women or families were not designed to shelter the innocent." The streets were filled with nickelodeons, which soon gave way to movie palaces. Filmmakers recognized "that the market wanted sex," so they provided titillated moviegoers with "stag films" in the early 1900s, which later evolved into porn-movie houses and peep shows. Playboy magazine first emerged on the scene in 1953, and by 1960, Hugh Hefner opened the first Playboy Club. By the 1980s, with consumers buying VCRs for home movie viewing, porn would prove to be one of the most lucrative i Grove/Atlantic, Inc. 0802116523 / 9780802116529
Hardcover Very Good Condition New York
Price:
27.23 USD
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THE CENTURY OF SEX: PLAYBOY'S HISTORY OF THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION, 1900-1999
Petersen, James R.
1999 46559 James R. Petersen, the former Playboy Advisor, turns pop historian in The Century of Sex, a breezy, data-packed history of American sexual culture and politics in the 20th century. Although the history was commissioned by the legendary founder of Playboy, Hugh Hefner explains in a foreword that the sexual revolution it chronicles is "not the one that I am sometimes credited (or, conversely, blamed for) starting." And so The Century of Sex begins with the battle between Anthony Comstock, the early 20th century's most powerful censor, and free-love advocate Ida Craddock (in which Comstock, pursuing charges of "circulation of obscene literature" against Craddock for distributing sex-education pamphlets through the mail, drove the activist to suicide.) Playboy's role certainly isn't overlooked, but it is situated within a context that includes changing representations of sexuality in cinema, women's and gay liberation, and the advent of cybersex. (The color plates in the middle of the book are a captivating visual synopsis, as the images get franker and more provocative.) There are a few clunkers--for example, identifying Madonna as a riot grrrl--but, all in all, Petersen's chronicle is informative and fun. From Publishers Weekly In an accessible survey of 100 years of sexual change in the U.S., Petersen, who wrote and edited the "Playboy Advisor" column for two decades, deftly demonstrates how deeply integral sex and sexuality have been to American society. More importantly, he charts how our endless conflicts over the regulation and representation of sexual activity have been emblematic of broader battles concerning the meaning of freedom and personal autonomy. Although some of Petersen's anecdotes are shopworn (e.g., Charlie Chaplin's lusty demands on his 15-year-old wife and J. Edgar Hoover's surveillance of Martin Luther King's sex life), he turns up some surprises, such as the sustained campaign by religious leaders against the circulation of pinups among G.I.s or the odd fact that such antithetical figures as Rev. Billy Graham and Margaret Mead both attacked the Kinsey Report. While Petersen gives some space to homosexuality, bisexuality and transgenderism, his focus is overwhelmingly heterosexual: for instance, when discussing I Was a Teenage Werewolf in the context of the eroticism of youth-oriented horror movies of the 1950s, he ignores the widely recognized gay male subtext. Lesbianism fares better here but, more often than not, is presented as titillating. By the end of the volume, Petersen's "pro-sex" discussion of the politics of rape, sexual harassment and porn takes on a strident, anti-feminist tone that becomes an unnuanced "defense" of Playboy founder Hugh Hefner's philosophy. 32 pages of photos. Grove Pr 0-8021-1652-3 / 9780802116529
Hardcover Very Good Condition New York
Price:
35.35 USD
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