What if the sexual revolution was a mistake?

Not a mistake of intention — but a mistake of understanding. What if the freedom we were promised was never the freedom we needed? And what if the loneliness epidemic, the dating app burnout, and the rise of AI companions are not separate crises, but the logical consequences of a single, flawed idea?

In this groundbreaking cultural history, Prince Penman traces the hidden line from Alfred Kinsey's fraudulent research to the sexual revolution, from the collapse of courtship to the loneliness epidemic, and from the loneliness economy to the age of algorithmic intimacy. Drawing on decades of scholarship and unflinching cultural analysis, The Kinsey Recantation argues that the sexual revolution was an experiment conducted on an entire civilization without its consent — and that we are still living with the results.

This is not a book about going back. It is a book about seeing clearly. It is a reckoning with what we lost, a grief for the connections we have destroyed, and a vision for a new synthesis that honors freedom and responsibility, autonomy and community, pleasure and meaning.

Provocative, meticulously researched, and impossible to un-read, The Kinsey Recantation is the definitive account of how we got here — and the first honest reckoning with what it will take to build something better.

Perfect for readers of The Case Against the Sexual Revolution, Together, and Bowling Alone.