Last Night in Paradise: Sex and Morals at the Century's End

"A brilliant and contrarian voice, à la Mary McCarthy."
--Kirkus Reviews
Writing with the unerring reportorial instinct she brought to her widely discussed The Morning After, one of our most outspoken cultural commentators chronicles our uneasy passage from the sexual revolution to the new Puritanism in a book that is one part history, one part prophecy, and all provocation.
KATIE ROIPHE depicts the inner landscape of a generation that practices condom etiquette yet fears that even the safest sex may not be safe enough. She shows how educators and ideologues have co-opted the fear of AIDS to promote their own moral agenda. Roiphe also writes about her sister Emily, who is herself HIV-positive, with a candor that makes Last Night in Paradise as much a personal document as it is a barometric reading of our sexual climate. Gripping, incisive, and at times incendiary, the result is a work of reportage in the tradition of Joan Didion's Slouching Toward Bethlehem--a portrait of an era that will be read and debated long after that era has passed.
"Resonant . . . I look forward to hearing from Ms. Roiphe again."
--Jennifer Grossman, Wall Street Journal