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Strange Antics

A History of Seduction

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When is seduction about more than just sex? In this brilliantly original history, Clement Knox explores these questions as well as the philosophy, legality, politics, art and literature of a force that underwrites our world.

In the first history of its kind, Clement Knox reassesses our idea of seduction in a narrative that moves from Casanova’s pursuit of pleasure, to America’s racialised seduction laws, to the Nazi propaganda designed to stoke sexual panic, and up to #MeToo.

Modern, big-thinking and enormously entertaining, Knox offers an extraordinary range of stories to chart the many guises of seduction, showing that our ideas about desire, courtship, and power have always developed in step with a changing world.

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I was really looking forward to reading this but quickly it's academic tone and rambling story telling paled. I persevered but now i've finished I rather wish I hadn't.

The early chapters go into tedious detail on the lives of Casanova, Mary Wollstonecraft and Mary Shelley. Much on their life and actions and little reflection on what that means for the theme of the book.

Jazz, flappers and the sexual revolution of the 1960s, incels, pickup artists and #metoo are all dealt with perfunctorily in the last chapter. There might be a good book in here if it had been pruned hard, as it is, it feels like a first pass at a phd dissertation before their tutor suggested many rewrites.

The narration is generally good and professional. though many mispronounced words, which would have been nothing much if the general text had been less rambling.

So overall, not what I'd hoped and I'm considering getting a refund.

Long winded and unfocused

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Not what I was expecting when I downloaded this book, a really interesting analysis of the history of Western Culture as viewed from the perspective of sexual liberation and Gender politics.

in 2022 many might take issue with the binary perspective of cisgender paradigms and a lack of transgender perspectives. But the text is an otherwise thorough and insightful look at the past few Centuries of cultural evolution and revolution.

Western Cultural History through a sexual lens

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