This narrative history of sexism in America presents the adventures of Fanny Wright, Victoria Woodhull, Mary Gove Nichols, and their contemporary reformers. Free Love rescues them from the neglect imposed on them by those who so dreaded the equality of women and their threat to change the status quo. The book describes the way myths were employed about the reformers, providing an anatomy of regression that continues in a contemporary culture that has responded to the assent of women with a reassertion of sexist values. Can anyone deny the current objectification of young women? By restoring yesterday's reformers to the public consciousness, the author's goal is to inspire new reformers who will help women opt out of this culture, who can create a path away from the one that leads inexorably to fake nails, fake tan, and fake breasts. Not long ago, feminists believed that they only had to install conditions for equality. The remnants of early nineteenth-century sexism in our culture would then wither away. Now, as we are bombarded with the sound bites and images of pop celebrity throwbacks, we must admit that the dystopia of sexism is alive and thriving in America. Perhaps Free Love can help renew the effort to establish Utopia in America.

Free Love: Cultivating the Garden of Eden in America

Recognizing that the past is nothing more than the stories we tell about it, Girty examines the myth of Simon Girty, the legendary "white savage" who terrorized the American western frontier during the American War for Independence and the Northwest Indian War. No serious book published since the nineteenth century has focused on this great villain of frontier mythology. While Daniel Boone and Simon Kenton were presented as great trailblazers and heroic Indian fighters, Simon Girty was demonized as a murderer and torturer of his fellow Americans. Stories are still written about the legendary frontier heroes, but now that the Indians have been exterminated or removed, the Girty myth is no longer useful. Girty's true story is far more fascinating than his myth -- a rarity in the literature of history, which is filled with more fiction than fact.

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