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.