David Rosen Writes

on sex, politics & American life

drwrites

Publications – 2021-2025

2025

2024

2023 

2022

2021

Polyamorous Americans

Since the nation’s founding, those in authority have sought to promote a morality of “family values” anchored in a belief in the patriarchal, heterosexual, monogamous nuclear family, the celebrated “Ozzie & Harriet” TV family of the 1950s. Read more.

Sex, Sin & Subversion

Sin, Sex & Subversion: How What Was Taboo in 1950s New York Became America’s New Normal was published by Skyhorse/Carrel in 2016 and is nominated for the 2017 Bonnie and Vern Bullough Book Award by the Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality (FSSS).

“New York is not a state capital or a national capital,” E. B. White famously wrote in 1949, “but it is by way of becoming the capital of the world.” In the ‘50s, as London, Paris, Berlin, Moscow and Tokyo recovered from a devastating war, the Big Apple became the capital of the 20th century.

During the tumultuous 1950s, sex was as threatening to the nation’s moral order as communism and New York was the epicenter of two “wars“ — a “cold war” waged against subversion and a “hot war” against sin. Today, the once forbidden has become the new normal.

Book Reviews

  • What is a Man?, a review of Thomas Page McBee’s Man Alive, FourTwoNine, October 14, 2014.
  • Double Identity, a review of Beau Riffenburgh’s Pinkerton’s Great Detective:  The Amazing Life and Times of James McParland.  Brooklyn Rail, December 2013,
  • Throwaway Lives, a review of Robert Kolker’s Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery, The Brooklyn Rail, September 2013.
  • Eyes Everywhere,  a review of Heidi Boghosian’s
 Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, 
Corporate Power, and Public Resistance, The Brooklyn Rail, September 2013.
  • Village People, a review of John Strausbaugh’s
 The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village, The Brooklyn Rail, April 2013.
  • What Academic Freedom? — a review of Marjorie Heins’ Priests of Our Democracy:  The Supreme Court, Academic Freedom and the Anti-Communist Purge, The Brooklyn Rail, April 2013.
  • The Body Politics —  a review of Nancy Cohen’s Delirium: The Politics of Sex in America.  The Brooklyn Rail, February 21013.
  • City at War — a review of Steven Jaffe’s New York at War:  Four Centuries of Combat, Fear, and Intrigue in Gotham.  Brooklyn Rail, September 2012.
  • Perversion is No Longer Perverse –– a review of Margo Weiss’ Techniques of Pleasure:  BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality; Brooklyn Rail, February 2012.
  • WR: The Wanders of a Lost Soul –– a review Christopher Turner’s Adventures in the Orgasmatron:  How the Sexual Revolution Came to America; Brooklyn Rail, February 2012.
  • The 1920s:  The Good Times? –– a review of Capital of the World:  A Portrait of New York City in the Roaring Twenties, by David Wallace; Brooklyn Rail, May 2011.
  • Cyber Wars 2.0 –– a review of The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom by Evgeny Morozov; Brooklyn Rail, April 2011.
  • Bottoms-Up American History — a  review of A Renegade History of the United States by Thaddeus Russell; Brooklyn Rail, February 2011.
  • The Not-So Roaring Twenties — a review of Anything Goes: A Biography of the Twenties by Lucy Moore and Last Call: The Rise and Fall of Prohibition by Daniel Okrent; Brooklyn Rail, July 2010.
  • Sex & the City of Orgies — a review of Sex in the City: An Illustrated History by Alison Maddex and NYCSEX: How New York City Transformed Sex in America (New York Museum of Sex); Sexuality and Culture, Winter, 2004.

 

America & the World

Sexual Politics

2013

2012

2011

2010-2007