★ 05/29/2017
In-your-face sexuality goes mainstream in this rollicking history of a lubricious decade. Vanity Fair editor Friend (Watching the World Change) surveys charged developments in the culture and politics of the 1990s, including the first stirrings of the gay marriage movement, seminal gains in feminist empowerment and the backlash against them by conservatives and panicked men (embodied by Michael Douglas in movies such as Fatal Attraction and Basic Instinct), the eruption of internet porn, and the introduction of Viagra. He wonderfully illustrates how an increasingly sensationalistic media paraded high-profile scandals, most notably Bill Clinton’s affairs with Gennifer Flowers and Monica Lewinsky, and how Clinton became a symbol of a new style of “perpetually horny, ever-prevaricating, irrepressibly optimistic” masculinity. Friend’s thoughtful and entertaining account of the era—he discusses “larger societal forces” behind the Brazilian-bikini-wax craze, for example—includes his own vivid present-day interviews with Anita Hill and John Wayne Bobbitt, among others. Ultimately, Friend presents an insightful and compulsively readable overview of America’s hormonal coming of age. Agent: Joy Harris, Joy Harris Literary. (Sept.)
The Naughty Nineties: The Triumph of the American Libido
Narrated by David Friend
David FriendUnabridged — 26 hours, 26 minutes
The Naughty Nineties: The Triumph of the American Libido
Narrated by David Friend
David FriendUnabridged — 26 hours, 26 minutes
Overview
The Naughty Nineties: The Triumph of the American Libido examines the scandal-strafed decade when our public and private lives began to blur due to the rise of the web, reality television, and the wholesale tabloidization of pop culture.
In this comprehensive and often hilarious time capsule, David Friend combines detailed reporting with first-person accounts from many of the decade's singular personalities, from Anita Hill to Monica Lewinsky, Lorena Bobbitt to Heidi Fleiss, Alan Cumming to Joan Rivers, Jesse Jackson to key members of the Clinton, Dole, and Bush teams.
The Naughty Nineties also uncovers unsung sexual pioneers, from the enterprising sisters who dreamed up the Brazilian bikini wax to the scientists who, quite by accident, discovered Viagra.
Editorial Reviews
"Vivid. [An] insightful and compulsively readable overview of America's hormonal coming of age."—Publishers Weekly, Starred Review
"How I loved this book! THE NAUGHTY NINETIES is a raucous ride through the 20th century's closing decade - an impressive sweep of social and cultural history in an era dominated by instant communication and gratification that presages our turbulent times. David Friend brilliantly captures the social and sexual revolution that came home to roost in the 1990s and left little to the imagination!"—Doris Kearns Goodwin, presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II and Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln
"This thoughtful and ridiculously entertaining book will surely solidify the '90s as America's most embarrassing decade."—Dave Eggers, bestselling author of A Hologram for the King and The Circle
"Sweeping...no one has put it together quite like this. Written with great brio and a tenacious attention to detail."—Vogue
"This is a rare literary gift: living, breathing history that is also a page turner, written with elegant candor and humor and passion that jump off the page. Amazing. Fabulous. I can't say enough about this book."—Jacqueline Woodson, National Book Award-winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming
"A superb and important book. A guiltily entertaining, impressively scholarly, and often laugh-out-loud witty account of the decade that ended a century — and millennium — with more than a few bangs. The Naughty Nineties is a fascinating study of how popular culture became, in the phrasing of one of its many nadir moments, a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty — and went south from there."—Christopher Buckley, political satirist, novelist, and author of Thank You for Smoking and The White House Mess
"David Friend's lively and authoritative study of millennial vulgarity and sleaze is (among other things) an excellent primer for the Age of Trump."—Martin Amis, author of The Moronic Inferno and The War Against Cliché
"A brilliantly researched and uproariously written romp through the sex-fueled Age of Clinton. Nothing is off-limits: Viagra, Brazilian Wax jobs, home-brewed pornography, Fox News, O.J. Simpson, and the birth of reality TV are all expertly grabbed by the scruff-of-the-neck. An instant American Studies classic!"—Douglas Brinkley, presidential historian and author of The Great Deluge
"Written with wit, zest, and subtlety, this is cultural history at its best. I'd lived through the decade, but not until I'd read The Naughty Nineties did I come to appreciate how boldly, and creepily, those years had foreshadowed the messy and bewildering moment we are in now."—Nathaniel Philbrick, National Book Award-winning author of In the Heart of the Sea
"A saucy, outrageous...delicious new book."—Amy Sohn, Elle
"A witty, comprehensively researched time capsule from an unforgettable age of excess, scandal, and sex."—Kirkus
"[A] gossipy retrospective of...the sexual politics as well as the pains and pleasures of the 1990s."—Library Journal
"An exhaustive, insightful exploration of America's obsession with its own horny self."—Vogue.com
"Compelling. Sprightly. A fresh view that deftly blends cultural and political analysis [to help] solve the central riddle of our current age — Why Donald Trump?"—Jon Meacham, TIME
"Lively. Irrepressible. Fun."—The National Book Review
"[A] fantastic and wonderfully exhaustive...book."—Vice.com
"[How] the decade...shaped the ground we stand on today."—The New York Times
"A great book."—Boston Public Radio Podcast with Jim Braude and Margery Eagan
"A true time capsule...impeccably researched...cultural history in the mold of David Halberstam's The Fifties."—Times Literary Supplement
07/01/2017
Vanity Fair editor Friend (Watching the World Change) offers up a gossipy retrospective of a decade most, though not all, of his readers will remember firsthand: over 600 pages chronicling the sexual politics as well as the pains and pleasures of the 1990s. Each of the 31 chapters focuses on a particular subject related to gender and sexuality with some narratives—the winding political and media fortunes of Bill and Hillary Clinton, for example—woven throughout the text. In rapid succession, readers are introduced to diverse subjects such as Sex in the City, Viagra, The Vagina Monologues, "don't ask, don't tell," virtual sex at the dawn of the Internet, plastic surgery, third-wave feminism, and the cultural significance of the man cave. Source notes at the end provide a list of books, articles, and interviews by the author that informed each chapter. Lengthy discursive footnotes, meanwhile, supplement the main narrative with additional details, anecdotes, and commentary. VERDICT Those wishing for in-depth analysis or historical contextualization will be left feeling winded by the pace of this cultural tour. Will most likely appeal to readers wishing to revisit Nineties cultural touchstones, deftly escorted by a somewhat insouciant tour guide.—Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook, Massachusetts Historical Soc.
★ 2017-06-27
How multiculturalism and sexual liberation shaped a distinctive decade.Emmy Award-winning documentarian and Vanity Fair editor Friend (Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11, 2006) meticulously captures the libidinous 1990s through the milestones that made the time period so indelible—and sometimes cringeworthy. The author casts a wide net over the entire decade and encapsulates political shifts and social changes, including the tabloid sensationalism of Donald Trump's divorce from Ivana, an event that marked the beginning of this heady "high-living, free-spending, balls-out era." Through key interviews and focused cultural analysis, Friend brings to life the "seismic shifts occurring at society's core," such as the rise of Viagra, medically enhanced fertility, the narrowing window of puberty for young women, Camille Paglia and third-wave feminism, the controversial "don't ask, don't tell" policy, gay marriage equality, and the fascinations with breast augmentation and the Brazilian bikini wax. The multifaceted world of entertainment was graced with the outspokenness of Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues, the antics of Howard Stern, Hollywood psychodramas, and the normalization of perennial plastic surgery. The author also discusses the brave sensuality of Demi Moore's magazine cover and Ellen DeGeneres' self-outing as having as much popular culture clout as the surgical precision of scorned wife Lorena Bobbitt and the courtroom circuses involving Monica Lewinsky, Paula Jones, and Anita Hill. Friend also shows how the mainstreaming of sex and the prevalence of and reliance on the internet for entertainment, pornography, and rapid-fire information (and the conservative, morality fueled backlash) played influential parts in swaying the masses toward less puritanical attitudes about eroticism. The author's field studies include joining a Manhattan bus tour of Sex and the City filming locations with anthropologist Helen Fisher and enlightening, contemporary interviews with Bobbitt, Jones, Heidi Fleiss, and others. Friend's clever afterword dovetails the political sins of the 1990s with how their eventual forgiveness ushered in the age of the billionaire as presidential candidate. A witty, comprehensively researched time capsule from an unforgettable age of excess, scandal, and sex.
Product Details
| BN ID: | 2940170034055 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Hachette Audio |
| Publication date: | 09/12/2017 |
| Edition description: | Unabridged |
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