Sex Without Marriage (Paperback or Softback)

Before the sexual revolution had a name, there was this book.

Written in the long, scandalized shadow of the Kinsey Reports, Sex Without Marriage dives—headfirst and eyes wide open—into the private lives of America’s singles at the dawn of the 1960s. Jonathan Starr speaks for the modern bachelor. Bonnie Golightly answers for the unmarried woman who refuses to blush. Together, they tackle desire, guilt, freedom, fear, and satisfaction with surprising candor, period blind spots intact.

By turns earnest, provocative, naïve, and unintentionally hilarious, this is less a how-to than a cultural snapshot—when “going all the way” was still a question, and talking about it at all felt dangerously modern. A frank, fascinating time capsule from a world on the brink.

Bonnie Golightly was a prolific mid-century novelist known for sexually explicit fiction, as well as a nonfiction writer addressing sex and marriage.

Jonathan Starr was an editor and writer for mid-century men’s magazines including Swank and Swingle, where he contributed sex- and relationship-focused nonfiction, sometimes under the byline “J. Starr.” This was his only known book-length work.