Thy Neighbor's Wife
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
In 1980, Gay Talese unleashed a cultural thunderbolt with Thy Neighbor's Wife, a meticulously reported chronicle of America's sexual revolution that is as provocative as it is revelatory. The book traces the lives of ordinary Americans — nudist camp operators, massage parlour owners, and suburban swingers — against the backdrop of a nation wrestling with liberation, desire, and the crumbling edifice of postwar moral conformity. At its centre are figures like Hugh Hefner and the operators of Sandstone Retreat, a California commune that became a crucible for the free-love movement, whose stories Talese weaves together into a sweeping social portrait of an era in upheaval. Talese, a founding father of New Journalism, brings his signature immersive reportage to bear on subject matter that most journalists of his generation would not have dared touch, spending years embedded in the world he documents to produce a work of startling intimacy and rigour. Thy Neighbor's Wife argues that America's obsession with sexual repression and its inevitable counterreaction are inseparable from the nation's deeper anxieties about freedom, identity, and community — a thesis that remains urgently relevant decades after its first publication. Written with the narrative momentum of a novel and the scrupulous authority of a legal brief, this landmark work of non-fiction leaves the reader questioning whether the revolution it so vividly captures was ever truly complete.
Author: Gay Talese
Format: Hardback
Published: 1980, Collins
Genre: Society & culture
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
In 1980, Gay Talese unleashed a cultural thunderbolt with Thy Neighbor's Wife, a meticulously reported chronicle of America's sexual revolution that is as provocative as it is revelatory. The book traces the lives of ordinary Americans — nudist camp operators, massage parlour owners, and suburban swingers — against the backdrop of a nation wrestling with liberation, desire, and the crumbling edifice of postwar moral conformity. At its centre are figures like Hugh Hefner and the operators of Sandstone Retreat, a California commune that became a crucible for the free-love movement, whose stories Talese weaves together into a sweeping social portrait of an era in upheaval. Talese, a founding father of New Journalism, brings his signature immersive reportage to bear on subject matter that most journalists of his generation would not have dared touch, spending years embedded in the world he documents to produce a work of startling intimacy and rigour. Thy Neighbor's Wife argues that America's obsession with sexual repression and its inevitable counterreaction are inseparable from the nation's deeper anxieties about freedom, identity, and community — a thesis that remains urgently relevant decades after its first publication. Written with the narrative momentum of a novel and the scrupulous authority of a legal brief, this landmark work of non-fiction leaves the reader questioning whether the revolution it so vividly captures was ever truly complete.