American Poly

Reviews / Votes

With thoughtful insight, Christopher Gleason's American Poly charts the unlikely juggernaut that polyamory and other forms of consensual non-monogamies have become in the United States. Framing the discussion in sexual dissent, Gleason explores the history that shaped the rise of polyamorous identity and its explosion of diverse variations. American Poly is a must-read for anyone who wants to understand the evolution of consensual non-monogamy and its impact on US relationships and families today. * Elisabeth Sheff, author of The Polyamorists Next Door * A lively, absorbing, and insightful account of a group of Americans who boldly challenged the sexual norms of their society. American Poly offers a highly original and compellingly presented narrative of a history that has been marginalized and hidden. * John D'Emilio, author of Memories of a Gay Catholic Boyhood: Coming of Age in the Sixties * Christopher M. Gleason's American Poly is a thoughtful, wonderfully researched, highly engaging deep dive into the exciting landscape of newly emerging sexual cultures of the twentieth century. From neo-paganism to 1960s communes to the theoretics of ethical non-monogamy, Queer activism, and Poly Pride Parades, American Poly places the Declaration of Independence's right to 'the pursuit of happiness' front and center in a continual unfolding of the affirmation of adventure, desire, and freedom. * Michael Bronski, author of A Queer History of the United States * A carefully researched and fascinating study of a subject strangely absent in most histories of sexuality. Christopher Gleason crafts an important and detailed story of some of polyamory's most thoughtful, ethical advocates, as well as the inevitable backlash from choleric critics primed to see sexual variation as the death of civilization. This is an important history of relationship possibilities many are too anxious to take seriously, well worth a read for historians and anyone who has secretly wondered if monogamy is the be-all we're told it is. * R. Marie Griffith, Washington University in St. Louis * An enlightening history of polyamory... In-depth profiles and institutional histories illuminate the oddball mix of conservative political thinking and countercultural spirituality that formed the theoretical underpinnings of contemporary polyamory. It's an equally entertaining and edifying account. * Publishers Weekly * Gleason argues, persuasively, that contemporary polyamory as a set of ideas and practices was articulated by the kind of free-love advocates best positioned to survive conservative backlash in the nineteen-eighties. These tended to be socially liberal fiscal conservatives who wanted love to be as free as the market. * Jennifer Wilson, The New Yorker * Polyamory, in this country at least, has pretty much always been the domain of nerds, as another recent (and much better) book, Christopher Gleason's American Poly: A History, makes clear. Gleason traces the genealogy of contemporary polyamorous practices back through a series of strange figures with strange views, including sci-fi-obsessed hippie libertarians, woo-woo neo-pagans, and straight-up right-wingers who thought family values could best be propagated through larger families... American Poly helps us recognize this not wholly revolutionary shift in sexual politics as a particularly acute facet of the persistent hangover of the Sixties. * Brandy Jensen, The Yale Review * American Poly is a thoroughly researched, worthy book about the movement and growing social acceptance of people in complex relationships, from the 1920s to the 2010s. * Choice * American Poly is meticulously researched and well written. * Glen W. Olson, Society for US Intellectual History * American Poly is meticulously researched and well written. * Glen W. Olson, Society for US Intellectual History * A well-researched attempt to show how a once-hidden practice has emerged into the open. * Reginald Harris, Gay & Lesbian Review * Groundbreaking....American Poly is a major contribution to the sexual history of the United States -- rigorous in its scholarship, graceful in its prose, timely in its impact. * Blake Slonecker, The Global Sixties *