David Rosen

David Rosen is a writer and business-development consultant. As a writer, he critically explores American history, public policy, media technology, and sexuality. He is the author of three books and, since 2006, has published nearly 200 articles in a wide variety of outlets.  Professionally, he served on the management teams taking public two media-tech startups and been a consultant to many for-profit companies, nonprofit organizations, and independent entrepreneurs and media makers. 

In addition, Mr. Rosen was convener and executive producer of “Digital Independence: A Forum on Creativity, Technology and Democracy,” a multiyear conference supported by the Ford and Rockefeller Foundations, among others. 

He served on the boards of directors of the Independent Television Service (ITVS/PBS, Treasurer), Film Arts Foundation, National Video Resources, MoMA Video Collection. He was a featured presenter at MIT’s 2013 Media-in-Transition conference, addressing the opening plenary panel, “Oversharing,” on digital media and privacy, and presented a talk, “Sexting & the Pornographic Imagination.”

Book Reviews by David Rosen

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“‘I became convinced that we must create a world in which no one is super rich—that there must be a cap on the amount of wealth any one person can have.

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“Polyamory prizes commitment, honesty, trust, mutual consent, open communications, and equality among all sexes and sexual orientations.”

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"‘Some girls fancy sailors, others fancy soldiers. But you, my dear, are a fag hag!’"

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For Freedom and Beauty are not fixed starts, but cut by man only from his own flesh, but lit by man, on

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“Like the Dadaist project upon which its members originally drew, Black Mask proposed the complete ruination of bourgeois culture.”

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“White evangelicalism is a movement thoroughly entrenched in American nationalism, white supremacy, patriarchy, and xenophobia.”

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“‘The scientific man does not aim for an immediate result. . . . His duty is to lay the foundation for those who are to come, and point the way.

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“I spent 33 years and 4 months in active service as a member of out country’s most agile military force—the Marine Corps. . . .

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“The question a critical reader must ask while carefully considering this thought-provoking book is whether the US is on the verge of a civil war.”

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“‘It doesn’t suit the Western establishment narrative that, yes, the West has political prisoners. It’s a reality, it’s not just me . . . .’”
—Julian Assange

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“Applegate’s well written and exhaustively researched biography of Polly Adler offers unique insight into a remarkable immigrant as well as the Roaring ’20s.”

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“‘what were long assumed to be urban Black ‘riots’ were, in fact, rebellions—political acts carried out in response to an unjust and repressive society.’”

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“The Invention of Miracles paints a textured portrait of a man driven not by an entrepreneurial desire to invent a product that changed the world but by a passion

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“The slave trade persisted in New York in the decades before the Civil War because

the city was the capital of the Southern slave economy.”

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“chronicles the century-long struggle following the Civil War by Black Americans and other people of color for true civil and social rights, particularly the right to engage in interracial—

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“The book is a lamentation on the fate of the post-World War II American Dream.”

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“In Defense of Looting is a reflection on violence as a form of social protest that can lead to social change.”

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“The book’s underlying thesis is simple: The skin is a living, permeable ‘dynamic interface,’ ‘a complex, diverse ecosystem.’”

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Over the last generation, sex has been mainstreamed into a multi-billion-dollar industry yet remains a war zone of fear and scandal.

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“‘The rise of the religious right should be cause for alarm among all who care about the future of democracy in America.’”

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“Donald Trump appears to conceive politics like business and sex—a combat zone contesting personal power, with winning the only pleasure.” 

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“The book’s reputation precedes—and far outshines—its actual content.”

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“The radicals in Holly Jackson’s informative book speak not only with truth and passion but with a vision of a different, better America.” 

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“Robin Marty and Jessica Mason Pieklo make clear that the likely end of Roe v Wade is at hand and involved more than the end of Roe.” 

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“Jennifer Silva serves as much as an academic scholar as a personal therapist, and a reader has to ask how she could endure the endless suffering experienced by her all-too-honest subjects.

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“If you want a crash course in the evolution of postmodern capitalism over the last five decades read Kochland.”

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“Polchin has collected innumerable long-lost newspaper stories of anonymous sex crimes involving gay men and, through careful analysis, given them historical and political

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“Is a baby a commodity? Is pregnancy and childbirth work? Is raising a child a job?”  

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“Chancer’s study is well-intentioned and well-argued, but does it answer the fundamental challenge it poses: Is it possible to ‘take back a revolution’?”

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“Fault Lines is a comprehensive portrait of American history over the last half-century that ignores the nation’s changing place in the increasingly globalized wor

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“Marty’s Handbook for a Post-Roe America is all the more important.”

 

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John Strausbaugh likes to tell big stories about New York—and he tells them very well.

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“‘Who owns the engines of the economy, and how are they governed?’”

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“A copy of Peter Phillips’ Giants: The Global Power Elite should be in everyone’s book case, like a good dictionary or atlas.” 

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"Some stories are better than the books written about them and, sadly, this is one of them."

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What is “value”? How is it established? And how has its meaning changed over time?

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“Stern offers an invaluable historical analysis of a nation’s moral order in crisis, one that Americans need to bear in mind as Trump’s war on those seeking asylum in the U.S.

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This book is a grand rollercoaster ride through a brief but significant moment of U.S. history, one that America will not likely witness again.

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“Paul Le Blanc’s October Song reminds readers just how difficult it is to make a revolution, especially one that failed.”

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No book could have a more auspicious moment of publication than Simon Baatz’s The Girl on the Velvet Swing.

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“Gordon argues that the Klan represents how some of the most primitive political passions are rooted in fear and hatred of otherness—and a willingness to exploit these sentiments for purpos

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A half century ago, Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously declared in Jacobellis v.

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Yes, the 1990s was oh-so naughty, and David Friend has a grand time telling this romp of a tale in his new book, The Naughty Nineties.

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Historians, like archeologists, play an invaluable role uncovering all-but-forgotten people of the past, thus helping provide a better picture of the present.

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“a great resource, but sadly, offers little understanding of how modern 20th century political culture was forged and the role radical women and men played in this critical development.”

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“The book is a roadmap to where the ‘immoral’ crosses the line to the ‘illegal,’ a boundary not fixed, but a terrain of social struggle that shifts over time.”

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New York is a different city in 2017 than it was in 1975.

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Geoffrey Stone’s Sex and the Constitution: Sex, Religion, and Law from America's Origins to the Twenty-First Century is one of the most importa

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Brian Donovan’s newest study, Respectability on Trial: Sex Crimes in New York City, 1900–1918, is an invaluable addition to the ever-growing library of scholarly works on the history of Go

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Jules Dassin’s classic film noir of New York, The Naked City, was released in 1948.