Overview

"During the tumultuous 1950s in America, sex was as threatening to the nation's moral order as communism. New York was the capital of the postWorld War II world and the epicenter of a fierce culture war over music, theatre, movies, fashion, and literature, as well as birth control, homosexuality, adolescent sex, pornography, and prostitution. Over the last half-century, America's social life-especially notions of culture, sexuality, and politics-has fundamentally changed, and what were once sinful or subversive sexual practices have been integrated into the marketplace, irreversibly changing American moral values; the once illicit has become an industry of more than $50 billion. Drawing on first-person interviews, unpublished memoirs, newspaper accounts, contemporary studies, government documents, and recent scholarship, Sin, Sex & Subversion argues that ""deviant"" sexuality was subversive, and that unique New York ""outsiders"" of the 1950s set the stage for the following decades and the world we know today. In each chapter, author David Rosen examines a critical moral issue through an in-depth profile of figures such as Liberace, Samuel Roth, Bettie Page, the Rosenbergs, and others. Through these individuals, Rosen shows how those who operated outside the law or who challenged popular values, even if they were silenced in their time, ended up paving the way for a new normal. Skyhorse Publishing, as well as our Arcade imprint, are proud to publish a broad range of books for readers interested in history-books about World War II, the Third Reich, Hitler and his henchmen, the JFK assassination, conspiracies, the American Civil War, the American Revolution, gladiators, Vikings, ancient Rome, medieval times, the old West, and much more. While not every title we publish becomes a New York Times bestseller or a national bestseller, we are committed to books on subjects that are sometimes overlooked and to authors whose work might not otherwise find a home."

Full Product Details

9781631440441

Table of Contents

Reviews

Rosen takes the reader on a grand and entertaining tour of New York's underbelly in the 1950s. By turning his incisive lens on the sexy, sinful, and subversive elements of that society he provides a clearer view of our own. --James F. Wilson, author of Bulldaggers, Pansies, and Chocolate Babies: Performance, Race, and Sexuality in the Harlem Renaissance No one reports from the nocturnal side of American culture with quite the verve of David Rosen. Sin, Sex & Subversion is a vivid panorama of New York City's secret underground in the 1950s, where an alternative society evolved devoted to enthusiastically breaking almost every social taboo and cultural norm. This is a provocative and dangerous book, a kind of Hollywood Babylon for Manhattan, charting how the forces of sexual and human liberation began to slip the repressive chains of American Puritanism. Rosen reminds us that this is not a dead history, but a fierce ongoing struggle that continues to reverberate in our current of age of anxiety-ridden politics. --Jeffrey St. Clair, editor for CounterPunch, author of Born Under a Bad Sky

Author Information

David Rosen is a writer and business-development consultant. He regularly contributes articles on sexuality, popular culture, and media to AlterNet, Brooklyn Rail, CounterPunch, and Salon. He also writes on technology and public policy for Cyber Defense, Filmmaker, and IndieWire. He is the author of Sex Scandal America: Politics & the Ritual of Public Shaming. He lives in New York City.

Tab Content 6

Customer Reviews

Recent Reviews

Countries Available