David Rosen Writes

on sex, politics & American life

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    • Sex Scandal America
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Reviews`

2022

  • Gangsters of Capitalism: Smedley Butler, the Marines, and the Making and Breaking of America’s Empire by Jonathan M. Katz, New York Journal of Books, February 14, 2022.
  • The Next Civil War:  Dispatches from the American Future by Stephen Marche, New York Journal of Books, February 4, 2022.

2021

  • Julian Assange in His Own Words, compiled and edited by Karen Sharp, New York Journal of Books, December 14, 2021.
  • Madam: The Biography of Polly Adler, Icon of the Jazz Age by Debbie Applegate, New York Journal of Books, November 29, 2021.
  • America on Fire: The Untold History of Police Violence and Black Rebellion Since the 1960s by Elizabeth Hinton, New York Journal of Books, May 24, 2021.
  • The Invention of Miracles: Language, Power, and Alexander Graham Bell’s Quest to End Deafness by Katie Booth, New York Journal of Books, April 5, 2021.

2020

  • White Fright: The Sexual Panic at the Heart of America’s Racist History by Jane Dailey, New York Journal of Books, November 24, 2020.
  • The Riches of This Land: The Untold, True Story of America’s Middle Class by Jim Tankersley, New York Journal of Books, September 11, 2020.
  • In Defense of Looting: A Riotous History of Uncivil Actions by Vicky Osterwell, New York Journal of Books, September 2, 2020.
  • What We Don’t Talk About When We Talk About #MeToo: Essays on Sex, Authority and the Mess of Life by JoAnn Wypijewski, New York Journal of Books, July 9, 2020.
  • The Power Worshippers: Inside the Dangerous Rise of Religious Nationalism by Katherine Stewart, New York Journal of Books, March 19, 2020.

2019

  • A Warning by Annoymous, New York Journal of Books, December 23, 2019.
  • American Radicals: How 19th Century Protest Shaped the Nation by Holly Jackson, New York Journal of Books, October 7, 2019.
  • The End of Roe v. Wade: Inside the Right’s Plan to Destroy Legal Abortion by Robin Marty and Jessica Mason Pieklo, New York Journal of Books, August 31, 2019.
  • We’re Still Here: Pain and Politics in the Heart of America by Jennifer M. Silva, New York Journal of Books, August 15, 2019, 2019.
  • Kochland: The Secret History of Koch Industries and Corporate Power in America by Christopher Leonard, New York Journal of Books, August 12, 2019, 2019.
  • After the Rise and Stall of American Feminism: Taking Back a Revolution by Lynn Chancer; New York Journal of Books, February 5, 2019.
  • Handbook for a Post-Roe America by Robin Marty; New York Journal of Books, January 21, 2019.

2018

  • Everything for Everyone: The Radical Tradition That is Shaping the Next Economy by Nathan Schneider; New York Journal of Books, October 17, 2018.
  • Giants: The Global Power Elite by Peter Phillips; New York Journal of Books, October 3, 2018.
  • The Value of Everything: Making and Taking in the Global Economy by Mariana Mazzucato; New York Journal of Books, September 25, 2018.
  • The Trials of Nina McCall: Sex, Surveillance, and the Decades-Long Government Plan to Imprison “Promiscuous” Women by Scott W. Stern; New York Journal of Books, June 26, 2018.
  • The Most Dangerous Man in America: Timothy Leary, Richard Nixon and the Hunt for the Fugitive King of LSD by Bill Minutaglio and Steven L. Davis; New York Journal of Books, March 13, 20018.

2017

  • The Second Coming of the KKK: The Ku Klux Klan of the 1920s and the American Political Tradition by Linda Gordon; New York Journal of Books, December 17, 2017.
  • The Naughty Nineties: The Triumph of the American Libido by David Friend; New York Journal of Book, November 3, 2017.
  • True Sex: The Lives of Trans Men at the Turn of the Twentieth Century by Emily Skidmore; New York Journal of Books, October 2, 2017.
  • Sex in the Digital Age, Paul Nixon and Isabel K. Düsterhöft, eds., (Routledge, 2017); New York Journal of Books, September 25, 2018
  • The War on Sex, David M. Halperin and Trevor Hoppe, eds; New York Journal of Book, June 5, 2017.
  • Fear City: New York’s Fiscal Crisis and the Rise of Austerity Politics by Kim Phillips-Fein; New York Journal of Book, May 26, 2017.
  • Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion, and Law from America’s Origins to the Twenty-First Century, by Geoffrey R. Stone; New York Journal of Books, April 11, 2017.
  • Respectability on Trial: Sex Crimes in New York City, 1900–1918 by Brian Donovan; New York Journal of Books, March 20, 2017.  
  • Suspect Freedoms: The Racial and Sexual Politics of Cubanidad in New York, 1823-1957 by Nancy Raquel Mirabel; New York Review of Books, February 13, 2017.

2016

  • Paradise Now: The Story of American Utopianism, by Chris Jennings (review), Sexuality & Culture, 20, no 2 (June 2016).
  • The Brooklyn Thrill-Kill Gang and the Great Comic Book Scare of the 1950s, Mariah Adlin (review), Sexuality and Culture, #20, v. 1, pp. 192-94 (January 2016).

2013

  • Pinkerton’s Great Detective: The Amazing Life and Times of James McParland by Beau Riffenburgh; The Brooklyn Rail, December 2013.
  • Lost Girls: An Unsolved American Mystery by Robert Kolker; The Brooklyn Rail, September 2013.
  • Spying on Democracy: Government Surveillance, 
Corporate Power, and Public Resistance by Heidi Boghosian; The Brooklyn Rail, September 2013.
  • The Village: 400 Years of Beats and Bohemians, Radicals and Rogues, a History of Greenwich Village by John Strausbaug; The Brooklyn Rail, June 2013.
  • Priests of Our Democracy: The Supreme Court, Academic Freedom and the Anti-Communist Purge by Marjorie Heins; The Brooklyn Rail, April 2013.
  • Delirium: The Politics of Sex in America by Nancy Cohen; The Brooklyn Rail, February 2013.

2012

  • New York at War: Four Centuries of Combat, Fear, and Intrigue in Gotham by Steven Jaffe; The Brooklyn Rail, September 2012.
  • Island of Vice: Theodore Roosevelt’s Doomed Quest to Clean Up Sin-Loving New York by Richard Zacks; The Brooklyn Rail, May 2012.
  • Carl Van Vechten & the Harlem Renaissance by Emily Bernard and Jews and Booze by Marni Davis; The Brooklyn Rail, April 2012.
  • Techniques of Pleasure: BDSM and the Circuits of Sexuality by Margot Weiss; The Brooklyn Rail, March 2012.
  • Adventures in the Orgasmatron:
 How the Sexual Revolution Came to America by Christopher Turner; The Brooklyn Rail, February 2012.

2011

  • Capital of the World:
 A Portrait of New York City in the Roaring Twenties by David Wallace; Brooklyn Rail,October 2011.
  • Stayin’ Alive: the 1970s and the Last Days of the Working Class by Jefferson Cowie;
 Rebel Rank and File: Labor Militancy and Revolt from Below During the Long 1970s by Aaron Brenner, Robert Brenner and Cal Winslow; and The Hidden 1970s: Histories of Radicalism, Dan Berger, ed.; The Brooklyn Rail, July-August, 2011
  • The Moral Underground: How Ordinary Americans Subvert an Unfair Economy by Lisa Dodson; Brooklyn Rail, May 2011
  • The Net Delusion: The Dark Side of Internet Freedom by Evgeny Morozov; The Brooklyn Rail, April 2011.
  • Winner-Take-All Politics: How Washington Made the Rich Richer — and Turned Its Back on the Middle Class by Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson; The Brooklyn Rail, March 2011.
  • A Renegade History of the United States by Thaddeus Russell; The Brooklyn Rail, February 2011.

Recent Articles

Why Stop at Roe: What’s Next?

The Supreme Court’s likely decision ending a woman’s right to an abortion raises a critical question: what other critical or landmark prior decisions could it overturn? Read more. … [Read More...]

Buffalo Shooting and the Great Replacement

Payton Gendron drove some 200 miles to Buffalo armed with a high-powered assault rifle and bulletproof body-armor and killed 10 people and wounded three others at a local supermarket in a Black … [Read More...]

The New Censorship Wars

In mid-April, Florida rejected fifty-four math books for classroom use, claiming they made reference to critical race theory and other “prohibited topics.” Read more. … [Read More...]


DAVID ROSEN is a widely published author whose books include
Sex, Sin & Subversion: The Transformation of 1950s New York’s Forbidden into America’s New Normal (2016); Sex Scandal America: Politics & the Ritual of Public Shaming (2009); Off-Hollywood: The Making & Marketing of Independent Films (1991), originally commissioned by the Sundance Institute and the Independent Feature Project. He is author of many scholarly articles, book reviews and popular pieces on media-tech, telecom, politics, sex and American life.

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