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. Filled with fresh details, this is a strong debut from a gifted young cultural critic (Elaine Showalter) Allyn has done a remarkable job of bringing together all the diverse strands of the sexual revolution -- from the principled and political to the purely hedonistic and outright kooky. (Barbara Ehrenreich) A useful and readable chronicle of the melange of activity and talk that changed American irreversibly. (Todd Gitlin, Chicago Tribune) Entertaining. A very readable and intelligent analysis of an often oversimplified era. (Entertainment Weekly) No other book gathers together this array of material.Allyn fascinatingly integrates hitherto unconnected figures.useful and readable. The New York Times Book