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Title: Make Love, Not War : The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History by David Allyn ISBN: 0-415-92942-3 Publisher: Routledge Pub. Date: 01 April, 2001 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.5 (6 reviews)
Rating: 3
Summary: GOOD CHOICE OF SUBJECT, BUT POOR ANALYSIS, LITTLE INSIGHT
Comment: The sexual revolution of the 1960's and 1970's is an important subject about which almost no documentation or analysis remains. David Allyn's Harvard U. Ph.D. dissertation, repackaged in this book, MAKE LOVE NOT WAR: The Sexual Revolution, An Unfettered History (2000), is one of the very few books about that subject currently in print. Mr. Allyn has not done a high quality job in treating his subject, but the fact he chose it at all at least keeps the subject alive and in public view, and may cause some future researcher/writer to pick up David Allyn's dropped baton and continue the race a further distance, hopefully with better results. Allyn's MAKE LOVE NOT WAR book is like Samuel Johnson's famous dog reported walking unassisted on its hind legs....never mind that it was not done skillfully....we should be grateful it was done at all.
MAKE LOVE NOT WAR (2000) is almost completely a compendium of popular, mass press and periodical feature story and news coverage of sexual theme material which appeared during the 1960's and 1970's. The mentality of most material reported is almost all airheaded, intentionally salacious stuff (as indeed is the final phrase of the book's subtitle..."An Unfettered History"). Hugh Hefner's "Playboy Philosophy" reflects this mentality best and exemplifies it importantly, and it is no accident author Allyn zeroes in on the phenomena of Hefner, Playboy Magazine and its imitators, and similar slick stuff of those times which appeared.
Hugh Hefner's opinion of the sexual revolution and its signifigance is not the stuff of which important scholarship and social and philosophical insight should be based, regardless of how profitable his magazine was in the 60's and 70's and still is.
Meanwhile, issues of supreme importance such as the impact sexual behavior and sexually related human needs have on individual health are entirely ignored. The term "health" does not appear in the book's index because, indeed, it is not discussed or investigated as a central topic.
The management and intellectual investigation of sexual needs and behavior is an important but ignored subject, mostly outlawed and forbidden throughout recorded history. The Sexual Revolution of the 1960's and 1970's, clumsy and temporary as it was (and as poorly documented and analyzed as it was), was a landmark exception to this dreary situation, an exception we are not likely to see repeated in the life time of the people who lived through it. Those people are now entering their 60's. They are still with us, still available to be interviewed.
Hopefully, some future writer/researcher will consider this subject in the future carefully and skillfully. When and if that happens (as it did not happen with MAKE LOVE NOT WAR), human society will be the better for it.
Rating: 5
Summary: Really gripping account
Comment: Because the 60's sexual revolution has been analyzed to death, this book may not initally seem like it covers new ground. but it presents the classic topic in a refreshing and balanced perspective.
Irrespective of the reader's own personal judgement, Allyn contends the sexual revolution was not solely one large orgy. but the creative work of many different movers and shakers that allowed us to enter into a dialog on the meaning and worth of sex outside childbearing. His history of the sexual revolution differs from earlier works such as Playboy's own (largely self-indulgent volume) because it readily gives credit where it is due to women and non-heterosexuals.
While the sexual revolution was supposed to be for the benefit of everybody in young America, the continued difficulty of securing contraception, the illegality of abortion, and loco parentis policies in Colleges made the concept an intially hollow promise for many women. Others, working in the new left quickly discovered they were expected to be little more than a Housewife/Sex object with an armband and picket sign to their male counterparts. Sexism was so pervasive the doublestandard was just repackaged in psychedelic garb.
The author points out it was feminists and gay liberationists who challenged narrow defintions of sexuality and brought the sexual revolution closest to accheiving it's utopian vision.
Because most other conventional histories of the 60's ignore or marginalize the contributions of these groups, this book should be required reading as part of a college course on the 1960's. Far from being monolithic, the sexual revolution had many unsung leaders, and we could not have the discussions on safe sex today were it not for these pioneers.
Rating: 4
Summary: Recall Sex, Not Titillation
Comment: For those who lived through the sixties (and can remember it!), this book will trigger a myriad of memories. There is an abundance of names of persons who, at the time, seemed to be on the cutting edge of new ideas and values, but who now seem quaint and illogical. Trivial and significant aspects of popular culture are placed into the mosaic of society's evolutionary events. The reader will likely derive a better understanding of America's search for the meaning and control of sex, but will be left wondering "So why are things the way that they are today?" Perhaps the question defies a sensible answer. Despite a possible negative connotation to my comments, I believe that the book is well worth the time and money, but the reader need not approach it with a yearning for sexual excitation.
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Title: The Century of Sex: Playboy's History of the Sexual Revolution, 1900-1999 by James R. Petersen, Hugh M. Hefner ISBN: 0802116523 Publisher: Pub Group West Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $35.00 |
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Title: The Sixties: Years of Hope Days of Rage by Todd Gitlin ISBN: 0553372122 Publisher: Bantam Pub. Date: 01 August, 1993 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: The World Split Open: How the Modern Women's Movement Changed America by Ruth Rosen ISBN: 0140097198 Publisher: Penguin Putnam Pub. Date: 02 January, 2001 List Price(USD): $15.00 |
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Title: America Divided: The Civil War of the 1960s by Maurice Isserman, Michael Kazin ISBN: 0195091914 Publisher: Oxford University Press Pub. Date: June, 2000 List Price(USD): $32.95 |
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Title: Sexual Revolution by Jeffrey Escoffier ISBN: 1560255250 Publisher: Thunder's Mouth Press Pub. Date: June, 2003 List Price(USD): $17.95 |
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