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9781324116752

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""Fascinating.… [Rebecca L. Davis] wants to show how the battles of today—over issues like gender nonconformity and reproductive rights—have antecedents that have been forgotten or suppressed."" -- Rebecca Mead - The New Yorker ""[An] important, ambitious and entertaining study."" -- Becca Rothfeld - Washington Post ""Davis’s sprawling account of sex and sexuality over the course of American history traverses the various behaviors, beliefs, debates, identities, and subcultures that have shaped the way we understand connection, desire, gender, and power. Comprehensive, rigorous, and unafraid to challenge readers, this history illuminates the present with brutal and startling clarity."" -- Sophia Stewart - The Millions ""An engrossing account of the surprising variety of sexual beliefs, behaviors, subcultures, and ‘culture wars’ that have marked American history from the beginning. This book will fascinate and challenge you."" -- Stephanie Coontz, author of Marriage, A History: How Love Conquered Marriage ""At a time when sex and sexuality are at the heart of our most polarizing debates, Rebecca L. Davis shows how both left and right have much to learn from history. Filled with colorful characters from a forgotten past, Fierce Desires is riveting, disruptive, and an essential book for our time."" -- Kristin Kobes Du Mez, best-selling author of Jesus and John Wayne ""The scope of Rebecca L. Davis’s knowledge and her vivid narratives make Fierce Desires an instant classic."" -- Christine Leigh Heyrman, author of Doomed Romance ""Rebecca L. Davis provides a fascinating account of the struggles over sexual identity and expression set in an unfamiliar geography and with historical actors new to many readers. She teaches us that such battles did not simply occur in the places we expect—New York and San Francisco—but across the South, the Midwest, and the Southwest, thanks to the courage and conviction of Native American, Black, and Latinx activists willing to challenge the limits of their local communities."" -- Kathleen M. Brown, author of Undoing Slavery ""In engaging prose and using truly fascinating examples, Rebecca L. Davis shows us that ideas about sexuality—far from being just a contemporary preoccupation—have always played a central role in how we organize our lives, construct our communities, and understand our differences."" -- Nicholas L. Syrett, author of The Trials of Madame Restell ""Fierce Desires is a smart and sweeping history of sexuality in the United States. It shows us how sexuality became a source of identity and a site of regulation; how it sustained race, class, and gender hierarchies; and how it inspired social movements and impassioned debates."" -- Joanne Meyerowitz, author of How Sex Changed

Author Information

Rebecca L. Davis is the Miller Family Endowed Early Career?Professor of History at the University of Delaware and?author of Public Confessions: The Religious Conversions that Changed American Politics?and More Perfect Unions: The American Search for Marital Bliss. She cohosts the podcast This Is Probably a Really Weird Question and produces Sexing History. She lives in Swarthmore, Pennsylvania.

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