THE NAUGHTY NINETIES

“How I loved this book! THE NAUGHTY NINETIES is a raucous ride through the 20th century’s closing decade—an impressive sweep of social and cultural history in an era dominated by instant communication and gratification that presages our turbulent times. David Friend brilliantly captures the social and sexual revolution that came home to roost in the 1990s and left little to the imagination!”
—Doris Kearns Goodwin

A sexual history of the 1990s when the Baby Boomers took over Washington, Hollywood, and Madison Avenue. A definitive look at the captains of the culture wars -- and an indispensable road map for understanding how we got to the Trump Teens.

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*Available in Audio & eBook.

THE NAUGHTY NINETIES
The Triumph of the American Libido

by David Friend

THE NAUGHTY NINETIES: The Triumph of the American Libido examines the scandal-strafed decade when our public and private lives began to blur due to the rise of the web, reality television, and the wholesale tabloidization of pop culture.

In this comprehensive and often hilarious time capsule, David Friend combines detailed reporting with first-person accounts from many of the decade’s singular personalities, from Anita Hill to Monica Lewinsky, Lenora Bobbitt to Heidi Fleiss, Alan Cumming to Joan Rivers, Jesse Jackson to key members of the Clinton, Dole, and Bush teams.

THE NAUGHTY NINETIES also uncovers unsung sexual pioneers, from the enterprising sisters who dreamed up the Brazilian bikini wax to the scientists who, quite by accident, discovered Viagra.

About the Author

David Friend

David Friend is a Vanity Fair editor, journalist, curator, and Emmy-winning documentary producer. The former director of photography for Life magazine, he is the author of Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11.

Media

Publisher's Weekly
In-your-face sexuality goes mainstream in this rollicking history of a lubricious decade.

Kirkus Reviews
How multiculturalism and sexual liberation shaped a distinctive decade.

Publisher's Weekly
The Sex Book, My Wife, and Me.

ADVANCE PRAISE FOR THE NAUGHTY NINETIES:

David Friend's lively and authoritative study of millennial vulgarity and sleaze is (among other things) an excellent primer for the Age of Trump.

Martin Amis

Author of The Moronic Inferno and The War Against Cliché

How I loved this book! THE NAUGHTY NINETIES is a raucous ride through the 20th century’s closing decade—an impressive sweep of social and cultural history in an era dominated by instant communication and gratification that presages our turbulent times. David Friend brilliantly captures the social and sexual revolution that came home to roost in the 1990s and left little to the imagination!

Doris Kearns Goodwin

Presidential historian and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of No Ordinary Time: Franklin and Eleanor Roosevelt: The Home Front in World War II and Team of Rivals: The Political Genius of Abraham Lincoln

In-your-face sexuality goes mainstream in this rollicking history of a lubricious decade. [A] thoughtful and entertaining account of the era. Vivid. Friend presents an insightful and compulsively readable overview of America's hormonal coming of age.

Publishers Weekly (Starred Review)

This thoughtful and ridiculously entertaining book will surely solidify the '90s as America's most embarrassing decade.

Dave Eggers

Bestselling author of A Hologram for the King and The Circle

This is a rare literary gift: living, breathing history that is also a page turner, written with elegant candor and humor and passion that jump off the page. Amazing. Fabulous. I can’t say enough about this book.

Jacqueline Woodson

National Book Award-winning author of Brown Girl Dreaming

A superb and important book. A guiltily entertaining, impressively scholarly, and often laugh-out-loud witty account of the decade that ended a century—and millennium—with more than a few bangs. THE NAUGHTY NINETIES is a fascinating study of how popular culture became, in the phrasing of one of its many nadir moments, a little bit nutty and a little bit slutty—and went south from there.

Christopher Buckley

Political satirist, editor, novelist, and bestselling author of Thank You for Smoking and The White House Mess

A brilliantly researched and uproariously written romp through the sex-fueled Age of Clinton. Nothing is off-limits: Viagra, Brazilian wax jobs, home-brewed pornography, Fox News, O.J. Simpson, and the birth of reality TV are all expertly grabbed by the scruff of the neck. An instant American Studies classic!

Douglas Brinkley

Presidential historian and author of The Great Deluge

Written with wit, zest, and subtlety, this is cultural history at its best. I'd lived through the decade, but not until I'd read THE NAUGHTY NINETIES did I come to appreciate how boldly, and creepily, those years had foreshadowed the messy and bewildering moment we are in now.

Nathaniel Philbrick

National Book Award-winning author of In the Heart of the Sea