Perseus Academic: Sex in Crisis by Dagmar Herzog

Only three decades after the legalization of abortion, the broad gains of the feminist movement, and the emergence of the gay rights movement, America has gone frigid. Republican—and even many Democrats—insist that abstinence is the only acceptable form of birth control, and fully 50 percent of American high schools teach a “sex education” curriculum that includes deceptive information about the prevalence of STDs and the failures rate of condoms. Students are taught that homosexuality is curable, and that pornography is addictive.

Americans are not anti-sex, but they’re increasing anxious about sex—largely due to the tactics of the Religious Right. Afraid of sounding unelectable, American liberals have failed to challenge its retrograde orthodoxy. We are all evangelicals now.

Fierce, witty, and brilliant, Sex in Crisis will force America to confront its national sexual dysfunction—and rally to demand a more sophisticated national conversation about the facts of life.

Dagmar Herzog is Professor of History at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. She is the author of two pioneering books, Intimacy and Exclusion and Sex after Fascism, as well as numerous scholarly articles on the history of human sexuality.