THE CENTURY OF SEX

Whoopee! In spite of assaults from the likes of Anthony Comstock, Catharine MacKinnon, Bill Clinton, and the Legion of Decency, sex has survived and thrived in this century. That much at least is clear from this abbreviated history put together by author Petersen (author of Playboy’s popular sex advice column for 20 years) and edited and with a Foreword by Hugh Hefner himself. Essentially a complilation of tidbits, enlivened occasionally by excerpts from erotic literature (Sons and Lovers, The Amboy Dukes, etc.), this volume also makes it clear that sex was not discovered in the 1960s, but that it was a highly popular, if much maligned, pastime as early as 1900. That was when Comstock and his New York Society for the Suppression of Vice were on the move to seize books, postcards, newspapers, and any other material he deemed obscene. The first decade was also the time of the girl in the red velvet swing, hysteria about white slavery, and Havelock Ellis spreading the seditious idea that sex was not only natural, but healthy. Subsequent decades saw dance halls, movie theaters, and women’s suffrage begin to loosen puritanical bonds, as did World War I and Margaret Sanger’s campaign for birth control. With World War II came penicillin, the first volume of the Kinsey report, and continuing battles over censorship; the 1950s saw increasing concern over sexual deviation (including homosexuality) and the first issue of Playboy. Next, in Petersen’s relentlessly obvious catalogue, came the flower children, feminism, and the pill, followed by a wave of so-called pornography and AIDS. The 1990s have given us technologically enhanced sex, via phone and Internet. Each chapter wraps with a snapshot of names, events, and statistics of the decade. A mosaic that is less colorful and titillating than one might imagine, but rewarding in its reminder of the deep roots of the sexual revolution. (32 pages color photos, not seen)