As the first full-length study of the history of sexuality in America, Intimate Matters offered trenchant insights into the sexual behavior of Americans from colonial times to the present. Now, twenty-five years after its first publication, this groundbreaking classic is back in a crucial and updated third edition. With new and extended chapters, D’Emilio and Freedman give us an even deeper understanding of how sexuality has dramatically influenced politics and culture throughout our history and into the present.

Hailed by critics for its comprehensive approach and noted by the US Supreme Court in the landmark Lawrence v. Texas ruling, this expanded new edition of Intimate Matters details the changes in sexuality and the ongoing growth of individual freedoms in the United States through meticulous research and lucid prose.

CONTENTS:

Preface to the Second Edition
Acknowledgments
Introduction

Part I. THE REPRODUCTIVE MATRIX. 1600-1800

1. Cultural Diversity in the Era of Settlement
2. Family Life and the Regulation of Deviance
3. Seeds of Change

Part II. DIVIDED PASSIONS, 1780-1900

4. Within the Family
5. Race and Sexuality
6. Outside the Family
7. Sexual Politics

Part III. TOWARD A NEW SEXUAL ORDER, 1880-1930

8. "Civilized Morality" Under Stress
9. Crusades for Sexual Order
10. Breaking with the Past

Part IV: THE RISE AND FALL OF SEXUAL LIBERALISM, 1920 TO THE PRESENT

1 1. Beyond Reproduction
12. Redrawing the Boundaries
13. Sexual Revolutions
14. The Sexualized Society
15. The Contemporary Political Crisis

Afterword
Notes
Selected Bibliography
Index

AUTHOR:

John D’Emilio is professor emeritus of history and gender and women’s studies at University of Illinois at Chicago. A Guggenheim Fellow and a pioneer in the field of gay and lesbian studies, he is the author, coauthor, or editor of numerous books, including Sexual Politics, Sexual Communities and Intimate Matters, which was cited in Justice Anthony Kennedy’s opinion in Lawrence v. Texas, the 2003 Supreme Court case overturning US anti-sodomy laws. Both are also published by the University of Chicago Press.

Estelle B. Freedman is the Edgar E. Robinson Professor in US History at Stanford University and the author of No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women.