Sexidemic is the first real cultural history of sexuality in the United States since the end of World War II. For a people who supposedly love sex, the author argues, Americans have had no shortage of problems with it. Since the end of World War II, in fact, we’ve had a contentious relationship with sexuality, the subject a source of considerable tension and controversy on both an individual and societal level. Rather than being a simple pleasure of life, something to be enjoyed, sex has served as a challenging and disruptive force in many Americans’ everyday lives for the last two-thirds of a century. Our love affair with sex has thus been a rocky one, filled with bumps in the road that have caused major instability across our cultural landscape. Our individualistic, competitive, consumerist, and anxious national character is both reflected in and reinforced by this “sexidemic,” something few have recognized or perhaps want to admit. By charting the cultural trajectory of sex in America since the end of World War II, Sexidemic reveals how the nation’s continual woes with sexuality helped make us an anxious, insecure people. The sex lives of many, perhaps most Americans have been in a perpetual state of crisis, a constant source of concern. We’ve fretted over every dimension of it, with problems in both quality and quantity. With this unhealthy view of sexuality, it was not surprising that we felt we needed a variety of potions and gadgets to make it happen or be pleasurable. In tracing the cultural trajectory of sex in our society, Samuel illustrates our bipolar approach to sexuality: low libido and sex addiction emerged as common disorders, and sex scandal after sex scandal has made headlines, especially over the last couple of years. Only money has surpassed sex as a source of stress for Americans; indeed, sex has come to be seen and treated as a commodity. In this timely work, the author traces the role sex plays in our society, how it shapes us and the world around us, and how we got where we are today in our views, treatment, and practice of sex and sexuality in our everyday lives.

Following the 1960's sexual revolution, rock and pop have continued to map the societal understanding of sexuality, feminism, and gender studies. Although scholarship has well established how early rock and roll encouraged and affected issues of sex in the baby boomer generation, this book asks how subsequent pop music has maintained that tradition. The text discusses the gendered performances and biographical experiences of individual musicians, including Patti Smith, Rufus Wainwright, Etta James, and Frank Ocean, and how their invented personae contribute to musical representations of sexuality. It evaluates lyric structure and symbolic language of these artists, and overall emphasizes how pop music, while a commodity art form, reflects the diversity of human sex and gender.

The media today is filled with powerful men in trouble for their sexual behaviors, and invariably, they are diagnosed as sexual addicts. Since Adam first hid his nakedness from God and pointed the finger at Eve, men have struggled to take responsibility for their sexuality. Over the past three decades, these behaviors have come to reflect not a moral failing, but instead, evidence of an ill-defined disease, that of "sexual addiction." The concept of sexual addiction is a controversial one because it is based on questionable research and subjective moral judgments. Labeling these behaviors as sex addiction asserts a false, dangerous myth that undermines personal responsibility. Not only does this epidemic of sex addiction excuses mislabel male sexuality as dangerous and unhealthy, but it destroys our ability to hold people accountable for their behaviors. By labeling males as weak and powerless before the onslaught and churning tide of lust, we take away those things that men should live up to: personal responsibility; integrity; self-control; independence; accountability; self-motivation; honor; respect for self and others. In The Myth of Sex Addiction, Ley presents the history and questionable science underlying this alleged disorder, exposing the moral and cultural judgments that are embedded in the concept, as well as the significant economic factors that drive the label of sex addiction in clinical practice and the popular media. Ley outlines how this label represents a social attack on many forms of sexuality--male sexuality in particular--as well as presenting the difficulty this label creates in holding people responsible for their sexual behaviors. Going against current assumptions and trends, Ley debunks the idea that sex addiction is real, or at least that it is as widespread as it appears to be. Instead, he suggests that the high-sex behaviors of some men is something that has been tacitly condoned for countless years and is only now labeled as a disorder as men are being held accountable to the same rules that have been applied to women. He suggests we should expect men to take responsibility for sexual choices, rather than supporting an approach that labels male sexual desire as a "demonic force" that must be resisted, feared, treated, and exorcised.

A collection of essays on the viscissitudes of sexuality and love. It deals with the familiar as well as the forbidden. Topics range from masturbation, orgasm and post-coital feelings, to extra-marital patterns, sex and nursing, and incest.

Much interest currently revolves around happiness in America, so much so that one could reasonably argue that there is a “happiness movement” afoot. The wide range of arenas in which happiness intersects reflects the subject’s centrality in everyday life in America these past one hundred years. Happiness in America charts the course of happiness within American culture over the past century, and concludes that most Americans have not had success becoming appreciably happier people despite considerable efforts to do so. Rather than follow a linear path, happiness has bobbed and weaved over the decades, its arc or trajectory a twisting and unpredictable one. Happiness has also both shaped and reflected our core values, with its expression at any given time a key indicator of who we are as a people. The book thus adds a missing and valuable piece to our understanding of American culture. Beyond serving as the definitive guide to happiness in this country, Happiness in America offers readers a provocative argument that challenges standard thinking. Despite popular belief, Americans have never been a particularly happy people. Our perpetual (and futile) search for happiness indicates widespread dissatisfaction and discontent with life in general, something that will come as a surprise to many. The image of Americans as a happy-go-lucky people is thus more mythology than reality, an important finding rooted in the inherent flaws of consumer capitalism. Our competitive and comparative American Way of Life has not proven to be an especially good formula for happiness, Samuel argues, with external signs of success unlikely to produce appreciably happier people. Given these findings, he suggests readers consider abandoning their pursuit of happiness and instead seek out greater joy in life.

DEATH, AMERICAN STYLE: A CULTURAL HISTORY OF DYING IN AMERICA is the first comprehensive cultural history to explore America’s uneasy relationship with death over the past century.

Human sexuality today stands at the crossroads between biological diversity and social conformity, and a battle between the two rages in the media, in social institutions, and in our daily lives. As a sex therapist, Michael Aaron witnesses this struggle each and every day as it plays out on his therapy couch. Modern Sexuality: The Truth about Sex and Relationships examines how biology and society collide head-on in the realm of human sexuality. Here, Aaron carefully and convincingly debunks some of the most commonly held beliefs about sexuality – that it is learned and can be changed; that “abnormal” sexual behavior is pathological; that healthy sexuality involves intimacy; that intimacy is the same to everyone; and that sexuality must have a clearly defined purpose. Using groundbreaking brain-imaging studies and cutting- edge psychological insights,Modern Sexuality presents the overwhelming case for sexual diversity including orientation, non-traditional relationships, and even specific fantasies and kinks. In a world where sexual “outsiders” battle for acceptance, this work helps to explore the variety of sexual expressions from a normative standpoint, helping readers to understand that their own desires and those of others can happily exist on the same continuum.

Methamphetamine: the quintessential American drug. American housewives, heads of state, businessmen and poets alike have acquired a taste for the yellow, crystalline powder. Everyone from Hitler to President Kennedy to Elvis to Jack Kerouac indulged in one of its many forms, and its presence has been an invisible hand shaping events, preparing the ground for the strangest drug epidemic the world has ever seen. Today methamphetamine is everywhere, and there seems to be no way of stemming its growth. It is the backbone of Ritalin and the "club drugs" Ecstasy, Eve and Cat. According to the DEA statistics, approximately four percent of all Americans have used clandestinely manufactured methamphetamine. In the 1960s and 1970s millions of mainstream Americans used and abused prescription amphetamines; today, anyone with a stovetop, a beaker, and a little know-how can make its derivative, methamphetamine, with chemicals purchased at the hardware store and pharmacy down the street. American Meth is the unprecedented story of a molecule in all of its incarnations, and the deep but little-known impact it has had on American life over the course of the last century. Told from the viewpoint of author Sterling Braswell, whose life has been touched by the drug, American Meth is a deeply personal drama that illuminates the epidemic we live with today.

As the controversial field of sex addiction treatment reaches for legitimacy across the disciplines of medicine, psychiatry and psychotherapy, Getting Real about Sex Addiction: A Psychodynamic Approach to Treatment applies psychoanalytic framework to concepts of addiction and sex, as well as related concepts of personality and attachment development. Authors Graeme Daniels and Joe Farley explore the intersection of sex and culture and address social undercurrent relating to gender, such as objectification and sexual aggression and how those influence conceptualization goals and procedures in treatment. Through a number of case illustrations and vignettes, this text demonstrates psychodynamic method across treatment contexts, in formats of individual, couples, and group therapy. The result is a work that critiques theoretical, intervention, and gender biases that have infiltrated this important yet embattled field, and provides a fresh, alternative approach from a source with the oldest pedigree in modern psychology.