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Estelle Freedman Asks "What is Sex?" and "What Does it Mean?" In Her New History.

Estelle Freedman co-author of Intimate Matters, A History of Sexuality in America. Among the principal observations Freedman makes in her book is that sexual puritanism was never as all-encompassing as most historians state when chronicling the mores of the 19th and early 20th Century. The book charts the liberalization of sex as value in itself, independent of reproduction. Freedman is a professor of history at Stanford University.

27:09
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Other segments from the episode on June 21, 1988

Fresh Air with Terry Gross, June 21, 1988: Interview with Estelle Freedman; Commentary on The Kinks; Interview with Irvin Muchnick; Review of Heinrich Boll's novel "Women in a River Landscape."

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