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Beaver Street

A History of Modern Pornography

Industry insider and best-selling author delivers devastating exposé of modern porn.

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For sixteen years Robert Rosen worked behind the X-rated scenes of such porn magazines as High Society, Stag, and D-Cup. In Beaver Street: A History of Modern Pornography, Rosen blows the lid off the lucrative and politically hounded adult industry, providing a darkly engaging account of its tumultuous decades—from the defining Traci Lords scandal and the conception of ‘free’ phone sex to the burgeoning success of smut in cyberspace in the twenty-first century.

When Robert Rosen came to international awareness with Nowhere Man, his critically acclaimed portrait of Lennon’s last days, few knew that the author had spent two decades toiling as a publisher, copywriter, editor and photographer in the pornography industry. As a jobbing writer looking to make ends meet, he stumbled into porn at the moment his new employers, publishers of the ‘adult’ magazine High Society, invented phone sex. Initiating the latest phase in the historical alliance of sex, money and technology, the culmination of ‘dial-a-porn’ would begat the internet ‘free’ pornography boom and ultimately condemn the entire industry to commercial extinction.

The intervening years are the most tumultuous, and lucrative in the history of smut, and Rosen was present at the dead centre of its darkest hour: the infamous Traci Lords scandal, and the ensuing moral and legal crusades of the left and right, which would see him and hundreds of colleagues staring prison in the face. In Beaver Street, however, this former pornographer bites back.

On the one hand Beaver Street is a portrait of an exceptional American workplace, full of tyrants, cynics, perverts and drug addicts, the owners getting filthy rich while Rosen and his colleagues sweat blood to fulfil the demanding and squalid responsibility of ensuring millions have something new to masturbate to every other week.

On the other hand (and this is why the author has christened his work an investigative memoir), Rosen’s intellect, curiosity, insight and penmanship hoists Beaver Street high above the average porn memoir, with Rosen not only unveiling the mechanics of the porn profiteers, but fixing the unbelievable events that rocked his entire sordid career in their fascinating political, technological and cultural contexts.

Andrew NettePulp Curry
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“My cultural highlights of 2021: [Beaver Street] is an utterly compelling look at the twilight years of New York’s analogue pornography industry from the 1970s to the early 1990s.”
Vanity Fair UK
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“HOT TYPE! Pick of the month”
Michael MustoColumnist, The Village Voice
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“Robert Rosen was in the trenches of the porn industry for years, and he clearly took copious notes with his one free hand. His history of modern porn is entertaining, insightful, and hot.”
Jamie MacleanEditor, Erotic Review
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“HOT PICK! Beaver Street captures the aroma of pornography, bottles it, and gives it so much class you could put it up there with Dior or Chanel.”
B.A. NilssonWords and Music
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“It's a very entertaining and well-written book. As a guy who went from studying with Joseph Heller to grinding out some of the most amusing girl copy I've ever seen, Bob knows how to make words dance.”
Sharan StreetAVN
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“Rosen is brutally honest about how his career affected his state of mind and his sense of self.”
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Robert Rosen

ROBERT ROSEN is the author of the international bestseller Nowhere Man: The Final Days of John Lennon. His work has appeared in a wide array of publications all over the world, including Uncut, Mother Jones, The Soho Weekly News, La Repubblica, VSD, Proceso, Reforma and El Heraldo. Over the course of a controversial career, Rosen has edited pornographic magazines and an underground newspaper; has written speeches for the Secretary of the Air Force; and has been awarded a Hugo Boss poetry prize. Rosen was born in Brooklyn and lives in New York City with his wife, Mary Lyn Maiscott, a writer, editor and singer. For more information about Robert Rosen, please go to robertrosennyc.com.

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