The provocative classic work newly updated An intimate personal odyssey across America's changing sexual landscape When first published, Gay Talese's 1981 groundbreaking work, Thy Neighbor's Wife , shocked a nation with its powerful, eye-opening revelations about the sexual activities and proclivities of the American public in the era before AIDS. A marvel of journalistic courage and craft, the book opened a window into a new world built on a new moral foundation, carrying the reader on a remarkable journey from the Playboy Mansion to the Supreme Court, to the backyards and bedrooms of suburbia—through the development of the porn industry, the rise of the "swinger" culture, the legal fight to define obscenity, and the daily sex lives of "ordinary" people. It is the book that forever changed the way Americans look at themselves and one another. “A report (the result of no less than nine years of work) on just how far some of us have willingly, gladly strayed not from nineteenth-century morality, but from the kind that most of the twentieth-century has taken for granted...We are given, really, a number of well-told stories, their social message cumulative: a drastically transformed American sexuality has emerged during this past couple of decades.” - New York Times Book Review “Every man who reads it will recognize himself. Every woman will discover, perhaps for the first time, the secret fantasies and public privations, the loneliness and passionate lusts, of most men.” - Chicago Sun-Times “A sexual Pilgrim’s Progress...Few writers have lived so long, traveled so far, on the frontiers of the sexual revolution.” - Atlantic Monthly “Talese does not proselytize, he informs...Readable and thoroughly entertaining.” - Vogue "Engrossing and provocative." Library Journal Bestselling author Gay Talese's exploration into the hidden and changing sex lives of Americans from all walks of life shocked the world when it was first published in 1981. Now considered a classic, this fascinating personal oddysey and revealing public reflection on American sexuality changed the way Americans looked at themselves and one another. The provocative classic work newly updated An intimate personal odyssey across America's changing sexual landscape When first published, Gay Talese's 1981 groundbreaking work, Thy Neighbor's Wife , shocked a nation with its powerful, eye-opening revelations about the sexual activities and proclivities of the American public in the era before AIDS. A marvel of journalistic courage and craft, the book opened a window into a new world built on a new moral foundation, carrying the reader on a remarkable journey from the Playboy Mansion to the Supreme Court, to the backyards and bedrooms of suburbia—through the development of the porn industry, the rise of the "swinger" culture, the legal fight to define obscenity, and the daily sex lives of "ordinary" people. It is the book that forever changed the way Americans look at themselves and one another. A former reporter for the New York Times , Gay Talese is a bestselling author who has written eleven books. He lives in New York City. Thy Neighbor's Wife By Gay Talese HarperCollins Publishers, Inc. Copyright © 2009 Gay Talese All right reserved. ISBN: 9780061665431 Chapter One She was completely nude, lying on her stomach in the desert sand, her legs spread wide, her long hair flowing in the wind, her head tilted back with her eyes closed. She seemed lost in private thoughts, remote from the world, reclining on this windswept dune in California near the Mexican border, adorned by nothing but her natural beauty. She wore no jewelry, no flowers in her hair; there were no footprints in the sand, nothing dated the day or spoiled the perfection of this photograph except the moist fingers of the seventeen-year-old schoolboy who held it and looked at it with adolescent longing and lust. The picture was in a photographic art magazine that he had just bought at a newsstand on the corner of Cerinak Road in suburban Chicago. It was an early evening in 1957, cold and windy, but Harold Rubin could feel the warmth rising within him as he studied the photograph under the streetlamp near the curb behind the stand, oblivious to the sounds of traffic and the people passing on their way home. He flipped through the pages to look at the other nude women, seeing to what degree he could respond to them. There had been times in the past when, after buying one of these magazines hastily, because they were sold under the counter and were therefore unavailable for adequate erotic preview, he was greatly disappointed. Either the volleyball-playing nudists in Sunshine & Health , the only magazine showing pubic hair in the 1950S, were too hefty; or the smiling show girls in Modern Man were trying too hard to entice; or the models in Classic Photography were merely objects of the camera, lost in artistic shadows. While Harold Rubin usually could achieve s