Sex, American Style
Published by Feral House, 1997. This was my first book, a socio-anthropological dig into America’s heterosexual revolution. The one I missed. Includes the histories of waterbeds, hot tubs, communes, nudist resorts, swingers, and all sorts of adult and mainstream pop culture. Tons of rare images.
* NOTE: This book is currently out of print, but copies are still floating around online here and here.
Meticulously researched and illustrated. Functions on many levels: as an attractive coffeetable curiosity, a legitimate sociological and cultural history, a media and porn trivia archive, and last but not least, for us surviving heterosaurs, as a handy device to turn a casual conversation in an uninhibited direction.—PaperBracing and funny. An encyclopedic illustrated guide to the era when pornography was chic, and wife-swapping was common enough to appear in mainstream films.—San Francisco Examiner (Full interview here)
Filled with photographs and memories of the brief glimmer of naughtiness that followed the sexual revolution and preceded the AIDS epidemic, Sex, American Style is endlessly amusing in showing how freedom of expression allowed people to be silly.—Amazon.com
Jack Boulware goes Boogie Nights one better by actually plopping the whole magilla down for us to alternately savor and wretch over; the Rush-dizzied, Plato’s Retreat-attending, Erica Jong-reading, bisexuality-dabbling, quadrophonic-listening Swinger’s Nation.—Spectator
Superb.—porn industry columnist Luke Ford
This is the best book since the last thing Tolstoy did. Aces.—Loaded
And of course, there’s the obligatory mention of Minnesota’s 1973 anti-VD ad campaign: “Clap. In Minnesota, It’s Not Applause.”—Dave Eggers, Esquire