The Naughty Nineties ─ The Triumph of the American Libido

The Naughty Nineties examines the era when our public and private lives began to blur. It explores that free-spending, rather carefree--and scandal--plagued-period that brought about the rise of the Clintons and The Simpsons, reality TV and the World Wide Web, estrogen-replacement therapy and Viagra... not to mention hooking up and dressing down, The Vagina Monologues and Sex and the City, the Promise Keepers and the Million Man March, the metrosexual and the MILF, booty rap and mainstream porn, the Spice Girls and the Wonderbra, sexual harassment laws and same-sex civil unions, Third-Wave Feminism and, alas, the wholesale tabloidization of popular culture.

In this imaginative and often hilarious time capsule, David Friend-an editor at Vanity Fair-marries narrative, analysis, and detailed reporting, providing in-depth, first-person accounts from many of the decade's most influential personalities, from Anita Hill to Monica Lewinsky, Lorena Bobbitt to Heidi Fleiss, Woody Allen to Joan Rivers, Alan Cumming to Michael Douglas, Dr. Helen Fisher to Dr. Drew Pinsky, the Rev. Jesse Jackson to key members of the Clinton, Dole, and Bush teams. THE NAUGHTY NINETIES also uncovers the unsung pioneers at the center of it all, from the two models who vied to be "the most downloaded woman on the Internet," to the enterprising sisters who came up with the Brazilian bikini wax, to the British scientists who, quite by accident, discovered a little blue pill that would become the fastest-selling drug in history.

David Friend-a journalist, culture critic, and Emmy-winning documentary producer-is the author of Watching the World Change: The Stories Behind the Images of 9/11.