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Sexidemic: A Cultural History of Sex in America. By l awRe n C e R. saMuel. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2013. Pp. 247. $42.00 (cloth).
In Sexidemic: A Cultural History of Sex in America, Lawrence R. Samuel attempts to trace the evolution of sexuality and sexual culture since the end of World War II, arguing that the dominant theme of American sexual history has been a "crisis . . . of epidemic proportions" (1). Samuel, who according to the book jacket is a writer whose company "[offers] cultural insights to Fortune 500 companies and their ad agencies," tries to engage in the scholarly conversation by citing various established historians, but Sexidemic does not meet the standards of scholarly history. Yet given the numerous academic works that are referenced, including textbooks, the book also does not seem to be intended for a popular audience, making it ver y difficult to situate.
Samuel claims to be offering a "comprehensive exploration" of American sexual history, although the book is surprisingly concise for such a goal, at less than two hundred pages of text (2-4). In spite of years of established scholarship on the subject, and contradicting his own secondary source references, Samuel asserts that his is the "first real cultural history of sexuality in the United States since the end of World War II, filling a large gap," and he expresses his surprise that "a dedicated cultural history of sexuality in America over the past two-thirds of a century has yet to be published" (2).
He focuses primarily on...