"A brilliant exposition of the historical and political contexts of eroticized fascism that also unravels the democratic imagination's vanilla fantasies about its own sexual rectitude. This is a landmark book: astute, subtle, marvelously readable, and in no way politically reassuring."—Laura Kipnis
"In Sex Drives, Laura Frost brilliantly addresses the most disturbing possible questions about the role of fascism in the construction of twentieth-century erotics and provides answers crucial to understanding many discourses that continue to inform sexuality today."—Carol Siegel, Washington State University
"Laura Frost notes in her revelatory new book, Sex Drives: Fantasies of Fascism in Literary Modernism, postwar Nazi chic had less to do with the real thing than with liberalism's 'powerful investments in . . . defining proper and deviant desire.' . . . . No wonder the '70s, with their deeply ambivalent fixation on transgressive sexuality, were also the heyday of Nazi chic."—Richard Goldstein, The Village Voice
Publisher's Weekly Best Books of the Week
The Times Higher Education Book of the Week
"Fresh, invigorating, witty and profound, her book impresses on every page.... This is criticism at its very best and it deserves to top any reading list on Modernism." -- Times Higher Education
"[Frost] is an irreverent, imaginative guide to modernism, and her own writing throughout this impressive study is a pleasure and a delight." --Linda Simon, Los Angeles Review of Books
"With its breezy erudition and fast-flowing, abundantly pleasurable prose, [The Problem with Pleasure] should find and delight a wide audience." --Judith Brown, Novel: A Forum on Fiction