What Wild Ecstasy

Rating:
Summary: An eye opener....
Review: I found that once I picked this book up, I could not put it down. I'm 51, graduated from high school in 1967, and lived through all of the time period this book covers. I remember Linda Lovelace and Deep Throat, but not until I read this book did I have a sense of what it meant. I remember Hustler and Larry Flynt, I remember much of this stuff. What I don't remember, and never knew, was the Hellfire Club, Marco Vassi, and even Annie Sprinkle. ......When I was finished I asked myself, "Where WAS I during all of this."

A great book on a great but terribly misunderstood subject. From the ridiculous (and almost repugnant) to the sublime...a really interesting survey of the creative force in life as it was unleashed in the recent past. Recommended.

Rating:
Summary: SEXUAL REVOLUTION BOOK PROVIDES VALUABLE INFORMATION
Review: John Heidenry, a former Penthouse Forum editor, has written one of the very few detailed accounts of the Sexual Revolution of the 1960's and 1970's. He describes the preliminary period of the 1950's and before leading into the Sexual Revolution, and also describes the depressing reaction to the sexual revolution which led to very successful efforts in the 1980's and 1990's to stamp it out so it would never return again.

The only other book which can come close to matching Heidenry's tome is MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR (2000) by Harvard scholar David Allyn (no relation to me). Heidenry was a major player in the heady days when PLAYBOY imitators such as HUSTLER and PENTHOUSE (which employed Heidenry as an editor of the PENTHOUSE FORUM) were big publishing success stories. Perhaps this is why one of the strongest offerings of his book are detailed accounts of the various sex enthusiast publishing efforts and empires, and description of such key movers and shakers as Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt.

The war on the Sexual Revolution and its successful if unethical tactics are described by John Heidenry in detail, and are the best part of his very well written book. Former Avco-Embassy Films publicist John Leo seems, according to Heidenry, to have single handedly invented the Herpes scare of the early 1980's, trumpeted forth from the pages of the secular publishing giant, TIME Magazine, and also from the pages of the Catholic Church affiliated COMMONWEAL. Leo penned articles in the early 80's for both publications ballyhooing the Herpes scare as the worst disease to afflict humankind since the Black Plague of the the Middle Ages, and seems to have done it "without a shread of epidemiological evidence." Leo is labeled one of the "principal anti-sex gurus," another of whom included George Leonard, the former West Coast Editor of LOOK Magazine. Leonard had once suggested in LOOK that sexual intercourse could and would be shown on network television, but went on, in 1982, to renounce his advocacy of the Sexual Revolution in his book titled THE END OF SEX. According to author Heidenry, Leonard had a lot of company in the world of pro-sex turned anti-sex journalists. The Sexual Revolution, he states, was largely assassinated by turn-coat media professionals.

Heidenry concludes that sexual activity continues in the world of human beings, even though the Sexual Revolution died. "As survey after survey affirms, people are having the same amount of sex. The human sex drive appears to be a constant factor in history. Most kinds and amounts of sex people are having appears to be increasing, though some forms of high risk behavior such as one night stands and wife swapping ("swinging") became, after the fall of the Sexual Revolution, highly unfashionable."

The Sexual Revolution was an important cultural event in American and world history. Very little has been written about it recently, and John Heidenry's excellent book is a wonderful exception. Every person who desires to understand the subject of sexual relations should obtain and read this book.

Rating:
Summary: SEXUAL REVOLUTION BOOK PROVIDES VALUABLE INFORMATION
Review: John Heidenry, a former Penthouse Forum editor, has written one of the very few detailed accounts of the Sexual Revolution of the 1960's and 1970's. He describes the preliminary period of the 1950's and before leading into the Sexual Revolution, and also describes the depressing reaction to the sexual revolution which led to very successful efforts in the 1980's and 1990's to stamp it out so it would never return again.

The only other book which can come close to matching Heidenry's tome is MAKE LOVE, NOT WAR (2000) by Harvard scholar David Allyn (no relation to me). Heidenry was a major player in the heady days when PLAYBOY imitators such as HUSTLER and PENTHOUSE (which employed Heidenry as an editor of the PENTHOUSE FORUM) were big publishing success stories. Perhaps this is why one of the strongest offerings of his book are detailed accounts of the various sex enthusiast publishing efforts and empires, and description of such key movers and shakers as Hugh Hefner and Larry Flynt.

The war on the Sexual Revolution and its successful if unethical tactics are described by John Heidenry in detail, and are the best part of his very well written book. Former Avco-Embassy Films publicist John Leo seems, according to Heidenry, to have single handedly invented the Herpes scare of the early 1980's, trumpeted forth from the pages of the secular publishing giant, TIME Magazine, and also from the pages of the Catholic Church affiliated COMMONWEAL. Leo penned articles in the early 80's for both publications ballyhooing the Herpes scare as the worst disease to afflict humankind since the Black Plague of the the Middle Ages, and seems to have done it "without a shread of epidemiological evidence." Leo is labeled one of the "principal anti-sex gurus," another of whom included George Leonard, the former West Coast Editor of LOOK Magazine. Leonard had once suggested in LOOK that sexual intercourse could and would be shown on network television, but went on, in 1982, to renounce his advocacy of the Sexual Revolution in his book titled THE END OF SEX. According to author Heidenry, Leonard had a lot of company in the world of pro-sex turned anti-sex journalists. The Sexual Revolution, he states, was largely assassinated by turn-coat media professionals.

Heidenry concludes that sexual activity continues in the world of human beings, even though the Sexual Revolution died. "As survey after survey affirms, people are having the same amount of sex. The human sex drive appears to be a constant factor in history. Most kinds and amounts of sex people are having appears to be increasing, though some forms of high risk behavior such as one night stands and wife swapping ("swinging") became, after the fall of the Sexual Revolution, highly unfashionable."

The Sexual Revolution was an important cultural event in American and world history. Very little has been written about it recently, and John Heidenry's excellent book is a wonderful exception. Every person who desires to understand the subject of sexual relations should obtain and read this book.

Rating:
Summary: Deceptive, but probably worthwhile for those who care.
Review: Two books that I feel are superior to 'What Wild Ecstasy' are 'Bunny:The Real Story of Playboy,' by Russell Miller and 'Thy Neighbor's Wife' by Gay Talese. That said, 'What Wild Ecstasy' is certainly a decent starting point for those interested in the sexual revolution from a kind of academic perspective, which is really what Heidenry offers. What this book lacks -- and I find it almost a lapse in editorial judgement -- is a truthful, accurate account of how this 'revolution' and, specifically, how pornography, has effected our culture. Where Heidenry REALLY lost me was his wholly inadequate and inexcusably limp discussion of sexual addiction. Heidenry offers us not quite two pages addressing this issue, beginning on page 320 where he introduces the founder of Sex Addicts Anonymous, and then on page 321, where he categorically dismisses the very notion of the existence of sex addiction with quotes from Kinsey (whose work has since been seriously called into question) and a long-ago sex educator, Mary Calderone, who said, "There is no such thing as too much sex." I suppose that's true, if you're in complete and utter denial. Just read the biography of former porn star Jerry Butler, "Raw Talent." There, Butler discusses the torment of sexual addiction, and how it cost him his marriage and any number of opportunities at a normal life. Or read Michael Ryan's book, "Secret Life," about how his compulsive sexual habits nearly led him to statutory rape. What's more, if you are TRULY interested in pornography and the cultural effects of sex, look at the works of the late Dr. Robert Stoller, particulary his books "Perversion: The Erotic Form of Hatred" and "Porn: Myths For the Twentieth Century." You might even want to seek out Sylvere Lotringer's "Overexposed: Treating Sexual Perversion in America." Lastly, I found Heidenry's treatment of sexual abuse of minors particularly dubious. He cites a study only to quickly discredit it with allegations that the statistics were exaggerated. And he seems dismissive himself of the very idea of child rape, particularly incest, dismissing out of hand the controversial feminist tome "The Courage to Heal." (No fair-minded person would cite such an already discounted book.) But it is how he ends his treatment of this subject that left me stunned. He ends this section with a conclusion from Dr. James Prescott who, in the 1970's was with the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. Writes Heidenry: "Prescott concluded that child abuse was above all a failure of parenting. But he emphasized that the solution was not to criminalize abusive mothers and fathers who had themselves been abused. Rather, an entire society had to learn or relearn nurture -- the most important sex education class of all." I'm sorry, but that is feeble. If you're from the midwest, you may have been able to read the accounts of horrific child abuse (detailed by reporter Bob Greene) over the past few years. Here in New York just this past week a mother scalded her child to death on purpose. Heidenry would have us beleive it is just "bad parenting." Look, the issue of sexuality is hugely important. This book does scrape superficially some of the more important items and personalities of the last thirty years. But to suggest that this is some definitve reference guide on this topic would be tragic. And no disrespect to Jack Heidenry, but I think if I want to find out about sex and sexuality, the very LAST place I would turn is to a guy who used to edit cheesy 'hot copy' for the masturbatory arts.

Rating:
Summary: a fun to read, fully loaded, history book
Review: What Wild Ecstasy; the rise and fall of the sexual revolution is a vast social survey covering the myriad ways in which sexuality was influenced by scientific, commercial, legal, creative and spiritual changes between the years 1965 and 1996. Author John Heidenry attempts to lead readers to "read more broadly and less cynically in the field of sexual literature, to see sexual issues not merely in terms of sexual politics or the inanities of pop-sex manuals, to judge sensationalist media treatment of AIDS, child pornography, and sexual abuse in a clearer light, and to regard human sexuality on all its misery and grandeur as every bit as important as foreign policy, celebrity scandals, or professional sports". Heidenry accomplishes what he attempts to, despite some prejudices and strong opinions.

The book, written in slick magazine style, gives glossy summations of the era's most notorious characters and events, interweaving longer life stories into a loose chronological structure based on the Human Sexual response Cycle. Sections are, in turn, called: desire, excitement, plateau, orgasm, and resolution. This format insinuates that the revolution chronicled is perhaps one of a larger set of social "orgasms", a crest of one wave before the next begins. In fact, Heidenry believes that the sexual revolution beginning in the 1960s is the third sexual revolution, the first occurring in Germany and Austria in the beginning of the century and the second overlapped and occurred in America with women breaking from traditional roles, Margaret Sanger, and culminating in the Kinsey reports. The fourth sexual revolution, the one we are a part of now, he predicts as a global transition based on technology whereby Western ideals of sexual equality are inducted into even the most remote of societies.

I have bought this book for several of my friends who have an interest in sexuality because it is readily accessible and full of interesting behind the scenes information while still grasping the complexity of the era and illustrating how the sectors interacted. Additionally I enjoyed the fact that his tone did not negate sexuality and in fact presented it in a very postive light.