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Make Love, Not War : The Sexual Revolution: An Unfettered History

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The sexual revolution of the 1960's and 1970's is an important subject about which almost no documentation or analysis remains. David Allyn's Harvard U. Ph.D. dissertation, repackaged in this book, MAKE LOVE NOT WAR: The Sexual Revolution, An Unfettered History (2000), is one of the very few books about that subject currently in print. Mr. Allyn has not done a high quality job in treating his subject, but the fact he chose it at all at least keeps the subject alive and in public view, and may cause some future researcher/writer to pick up David Allyn's dropped baton and continue the race a further distance, hopefully with better results. Allyn's MAKE LOVE NOT WAR book is like Samuel Johnson's famous dog reported walking unassisted on its hind legs....never mind that it was not done skillfully....we should be grateful it was done at all.

MAKE LOVE NOT WAR (2000) is almost completely a compendium of popular, mass press and periodical feature story and news coverage of sexual theme material which appeared during the 1960's and 1970's. The mentality of most material reported is almost all airheaded, intentionally salacious stuff (as indeed is the final phrase of the book's subtitle..."An Unfettered History"). Hugh Hefner's "Playboy Philosophy" reflects this mentality best and exemplifies it importantly, and it is no accident author Allyn zeroes in on the phenomena of Hefner, Playboy Magazine and its imitators, and similar slick stuff of those times which appeared.

Hugh Hefner's opinion of the sexual revolution and its signifigance is not the stuff of which important scholarship and social and philosophical insight should be based, regardless of how profitable his magazine was in the 60's and 70's and still is.

Meanwhile, issues of supreme importance such as the impact sexual behavior and sexually related human needs have on individual health are entirely ignored. The term "health" does not appear in the book's index because, indeed, it is not discussed or investigated as a central topic.

The management and intellectual investigation of sexual needs and behavior is an important but ignored subject, mostly outlawed and forbidden throughout recorded history. The Sexual Revolution of the 1960's and 1970's, clumsy and temporary as it was (and as poorly documented and analyzed as it was), was a landmark exception to this dreary situation, an exception we are not likely to see repeated in the life time of the people who lived through it. Those people are now entering their 60's. They are still with us, still available to be interviewed.

Hopefully, some future writer/researcher will consider this subject in the future carefully and skillfully. When and if that happens (as it did not happen with MAKE LOVE NOT WAR), human society will be the better for it.

Allyn's book made me look at the sixties in a whole new light. He's young, he was born in '69, but I think that gives him the ability to write about the sexual revolution and all that happened in the sixties with an objective persepctive. He argues that the sexual revolution taught people to speak how to speak about sex but not how to listen. He also shows how we're still as ambivalent about sex as we ever were. I think those are important points. And the book is a great read! He doesn't just focus on famous people like Hugh Hefner (though he did interiew him). Allyn writes about "average" people who were challenging middle-class sexual morality in their own ways. He has an interview with one guy who formed a Catholic group sex commune. You don't hear those stories in the typical sixties retrospectives.

Was the sexual revolution a confluence of forces producing a shift in society (like the industrial) or an organized, ideological effort to overthrow the existing order (like the French)? A little of both, and this book takes a look at both the radicals and those swept along by social, cultural, and technological change.

A broad, fast-paced, and fascinating overview of an often neglected part of United States history. Provides plenty of food for thought for students of history or the would-be revolutionaries of more recent generations.

Graduating from high school in 1967 put me in the midst of the sexual revolution, but being a product of fifties parents and working my way through college, I never got caught up in it despite attending San Jose State, a campus housing a Black Panther Society. How did I miss the fact that The Weathermen and the SDS had at their cord (along with "over-throwing the U.S. government and anniliating the sexual tradition of monogamy) the ideology of Make Love Not War? Allyn has written a book so jam packed with information on the "sexual revolution," a chronological as well as psychological time line of events that has gotten us, believe it or not, closer to the dreamed of equality for men and women of all sexual orientations. It is a must read. I plan to read it again. Now if we, the children of this era, could just work on the "Not War" part.

Interesting book, discusses the social evolution which produced the conditions for the Sexual Revolution and the political/legal battles which ended government/university oversight of individuals and their sexual choices. For anyone under 40 the book also opens a window into the relations between men and women before, and during the Sexual Revolution. Worth buying and reading, particularly if you are interested in understanding how the Sexual Revolution has impacted male/female relations today.

Because the 60's sexual revolution has been analyzed to death, this book may not initally seem like it covers new ground. but it presents the classic topic in a refreshing and balanced perspective.

Irrespective of the reader's own personal judgement, Allyn contends the sexual revolution was not solely one large orgy. but the creative work of many different movers and shakers that allowed us to enter into a dialog on the meaning and worth of sex outside childbearing. His history of the sexual revolution differs from earlier works such as Playboy's own (largely self-indulgent volume) because it readily gives credit where it is due to women and non-heterosexuals.

While the sexual revolution was supposed to be for the benefit of everybody in young America, the continued difficulty of securing contraception, the illegality of abortion, and loco parentis policies in Colleges made the concept an intially hollow promise for many women. Others, working in the new left quickly discovered they were expected to be little more than a Housewife/Sex object with an armband and picket sign to their male counterparts. Sexism was so pervasive the doublestandard was just repackaged in psychedelic garb.

The author points out it was feminists and gay liberationists who challenged narrow defintions of sexuality and brought the sexual revolution closest to accheiving it's utopian vision.

Because most other conventional histories of the 60's ignore or marginalize the contributions of these groups, this book should be required reading as part of a college course on the 1960's. Far from being monolithic, the sexual revolution had many unsung leaders, and we could not have the discussions on safe sex today were it not for these pioneers.

For those who lived through the sixties (and can remember it!), this book will trigger a myriad of memories. There is an abundance of names of persons who, at the time, seemed to be on the cutting edge of new ideas and values, but who now seem quaint and illogical. Trivial and significant aspects of popular culture are placed into the mosaic of society's evolutionary events. The reader will likely derive a better understanding of America's search for the meaning and control of sex, but will be left wondering "So why are things the way that they are today?" Perhaps the question defies a sensible answer. Despite a possible negative connotation to my comments, I believe that the book is well worth the time and money, but the reader need not approach it with a yearning for sexual excitation.

Make Love, Not War is the first book I've read on sex in America that is both intelligent and titiliating. The chapters on group sex and swinging are too good to put down. Allyn did amazing interviews--he basically interviewed everyone who was involved in the sexual revolution. I highly recommend this book for anyone interested in sex or American culture.

I was in grade school in the 70's and missed the sexual revolution. But I never really knew how much I missed. This book tells it all. I loved it.

This book is more in the style of a graduate thesis and of the titilliative standard of Playboy and no wonder since so much attention is focused on Hugh Hefner who is hardly known for his intellectual rigor or integrity.There is hardly any discussion of what loose sexual morals do to a society.One of the signs it would seem of a society collapsing can be found in the slow demise of the Roman Empire in terms of sexual practice being unrestrained among other things..If we have form but no freedom that is dictatorship,if we have freedom but no form that is chaos.It was chaotic to live through and be part of the so-called sexual revolution and as one who did I deeply regret now many of the things I said and did.When the human brain is situated somewhere between the hips it does not auger for good choices in life.The traditional family structure is the best form for men and women and for humanity in general to live by and I find myself aggreeing with God about that.There is virtually no discussion in this book about abortion or indeed the fallout from this so called revolution and I am afraid for all the feminist braying about a new day dawning many women are still being trafficked as sex slaves across the world.Prostitution is still as rife as ever as many women are dependent on drugs and misuse their bodies to try and maintain their destructive drug habits.Pornography has extended it self and become a multi billion dollar industry and probably funding terrorism in some quarters.It may not be of course but the exploitation of people goes on apace. Homosexuals for all their so called gay pride are still making life miserable for the ordinary guy who just wants to go to the toilet and not be an unwilling part of a peep show and as for the practice of sex there is yet morre evidence in the divorce courts of every country in the world how damaging that is.The period in question needs a far more incisive and reasoned treatment than this book affords.Perhaps we should rename it the First Edition in the hope that by the fiftieth Edition a better analysis will be done and from a deeper perspective than the above author can currently supply it would seem.The Dust of Death: The Sixties Counterculture and How It Changed America Forever