Providing both a chronicle of the radical sex movement in the United States, as well as the definitive opinions of America's most consistent and trenchant sexual critic, Public Sex is must-read material for anyone interested in sexual practices, feminism, censorship, or simply the art of the political essay.

    Edited and with an introduction by Joel-Peter Witkin, the book includes turn-of-the-century crime-scene photographs, nineteenth-century asylum inmate portraits with calligraphic annotations detailing the patients' diagnoses, nineteenth-century medical photographs from the Burns Archive, and a selection of images from the Kinsey Institute for Sex Research. The ability of the photograph to show us our powerlessness in the face of madness, lust, disease, and death, survives in these brittle and arresting images.

    Without a continuing lineage, without a temple, the contemporary sexual healer has many faces. Today she is a sex surrogate, sexual meditation teacher, call girl, porn star, or even a shaman.

    They maintained their will to alter their fate, survived subjugation, and quite often escaped to establish families in the American west. 14 illustrations, 3 maps.