“[An] enchanting journey through Ann Hood’s early fascination with reading.… Book lovers will find Morningstar irresistible.”—Lynn Sharon Schwartz, author of Ruined by Reading Growing up in a mill town in Rhode Island, in a household that didn’t foster a love of reading, novelist Ann Hood discovered nonetheless the transformative power of literature. She learned to channel her imagination, ambitions, and curiosity by devouring ever-growing stacks of books. In Morningstar, Hood recollects with warmth and honesty how The Bell Jar, Marjorie Morningstar, The Harrad Experiment, and The Outsiders influenced her teen psyche and introduced her to topics that could not be discussed at home: desire, fear, sexuality, and madness. Later, Johnny Got His Gun and Grapes of Wrath dramatically influenced her political thinking while the Vietnam War and Kent State shootings became headline news, and classics such as Dr. Zhivago and Les Misérables stoked her ambitions to travel the world. With characteristic insight and charm, Hood showcases the ways in which books gave her life and can transform—even save—our own lives.

The first publication of Raw Talent created an extraordinary flurry of publicity. Jerry Butler appeared on dozens of talk shows, capturing audiences with his intensity and charm. Reviews of the book lauded Butler''s honesty and remarked on the double standard that permits explicit violence on film - but not explicit sex. The book sold out four printings; nonetheless, reactions within the adult film industry included heated debate and an unofficial blacklisting of Butler.The former star of X-rated films and winner of many awards, Jerry Butler wrote the book that many warned would "finish him" in the business that had rewarded him with money and fame. But it is characteristic of Butler that these warnings didn''t prevent him from producing this devastatingly honest appraisal of the adult film trade - and of himself. For while Butler is frankly critical of an industry that treats actors and actresses like throw-away props, and allows unprotected sex in the age of AIDS, he reserves his most candid commentary for himself. Raw Talent tells the story of Butler''s erotic voyage from average child to sex star. The epilogue added to this new edition answers the question: Where will Jerry go from here?

Is it legalized adultery or the preservation of the family? Afterwards, Nancy couldn't remember when it had all started. Or just how they'd taken the first intimate step. But, it wasn't until one perfect weekend in New Hampshire that they all knew they could never live monogamously again--that they loved and needed each other and that they were proud of it--that the years ahead would be difficult for all of them--but that now there was no turning back....

When Helen Gurley Brown's Sex and the Single Girl hit bookstores in 1962, the sexual revolution was launched and there was no turning back. Soon came the pill, the end of censorship, the advent of feminism, and the rise of commercial pornography. Our daily lives changed in an unprecedented time of sexual openness and experimentation. Make Love, Not War is the first serious treatment of the complicated events, ideas, and personalities that drove the sexual revolution forward. Based on first-hand accounts, diaries, interviews, and period research, it traces changes in private lives and public discourse from the fearful fifties to the first tremors of rebellion in the early sixties to the heady heyday of the revolution. Bringing a fresh perspective to the turbulence of these decades, David Allyn argues that the sexual revolutionaries of the '60s and '70s, by telling the truth about their own histories and desires, forced all Americans to re-examine the very meaning of freedom. Written with a historian's attention to nuance and a novelist's narrative drive, Make Love, Not War is a provocative, vivid, and thoughtful account of one of the most captivating episodes in American history. Also includes an 8-page insert.

A new-age experiment takes place in the 1960s at Harrad College, a privately endowed and liberally run school that admits carefully selected students. This social experiment encourages premarital living arrangements and is totally committed - not mere lip-service or public-relations hype - to getting young men and women to think and act for themselves.What do they think about? Everything that interests the author, Bob Rimmer: human relations, sex, history, philosophy, anatomy, existentialism, art, music, Zen, politics - and, once more, sex.Four Harrad students record their thoughts regularly for four years. Their diaries include large chunks of college action, conversation, and portraits of fellow students, so the reader is swept into the lives of these young adults trying to sort out the jumbled mores of America's Sixties.Stanley Kolasukas, a bright, good-looking youth from a poor Polish family finds himself a roommate of Sheila Grove, the introspective daughter of an oil millionaire. Harry Schacht, a brilliant but ungainly medical student from an Orthodox Jewish background, lives with Beth Hillyer, a girl with enough drive to be a better doctor and enough sensuality to need many men in her life. Jack Dawes, imaginative and enthusiastic, lives with Valerie Latrobe, a dominant girl who believes she can better any man at anything.The original Harrad Experiment sold more than three million copies. This 25th anniversary edition includes a new epilogue describing the startling Harrad/Premar Solution, a fully up-to-date and annotated bibliography of books that support the daring, joyfully subversive premises outlined in Harrad, and Robert Rimmer's candid, controversial autobiography. When you have read this book, you will find yourself entertaining the question of whether a real-life Harrad Experiment could - or should - be going on somewhere today, turning out a very special group of young men and women with the potential to utterly change America's ways of living, thinking, and loving in the 21st century.