"One of the best things going in auto-bio inflected comics these days." -- Art Spiegelman, Maus

The controversial chronicle of a motel owner who secretly studied the sex lives of his guests by the renowned journalist and author of Thy Neighbor’s Wife. On January 7, 1980, in the run-up to the publication of his landmark bestseller Thy Neighbor’s Wife, Gay Talese received an anonymous letter from a man in Colorado. “Since learning of your long-awaited study of coast-to-coast sex in America,” the letter began, “I feel I have important information that I could contribute to its contents or to contents of a future book.” The man—Gerald Foos—hen divulged an astonishing secret: he had bought a motel outside Denver for the express purpose of satisfying his voyeuristic desires. Underneath its peaked roof, he had built an “observation platform” through which he could peer down on his unwitting guests. Over the years, Foos sent Talese hundreds of pages of notes on his guests, work that Foos believed made him a pioneering researcher into American society and sexuality. Through his Voyeur’s motel, he witnessed and recorded the harsh effects of the war in Vietnam, the upheaval in gender roles, the decline of segregation, and much more. In The Voyeur’s Motel. “the reader observes Talese observing Foos observing his guests.” An extraordinary work of narrative journalism, it is at once an examination of one unsettling man and a portrait of the secret life of the American heartland over the latter half of the twentieth century (Daily Mail, UK). “This is a weird book about weird people doing weird things, and I wouldn’t have put it down if the house were on fire.” —John Greenya, Washington Times

From 24-hour-a-day "girl cam" sites on the World Wide Web to trash-talk television shows like "Jerry Springer" and reality television programs like "Cops," we've become a world of voyeurs. We like to watch others as their intimate moments, private facts, secrets, and dirty laundry are revealed. Voyeur Nation traces the evolution and forces driving what the author calls the 'voyeurism value.' Calvert argues that although spectatorship and sensationalism are far from new phenomena, today a confluence of factors-legal, social, political, and technological-pushes voyeurism to the forefront of our image-based world. The First Amendment increasingly is called on to safeguard our right, via new technologies and recording devices, to peer into the innermost details of others' lives without fear of legal repercussion. But Calvert argues that the voyeurism value contradicts the value of discourse in democracy and First Amendment theory, since voyeurism by its very nature involves merely watching without interacting or participating. It privileges watching and viewing media images over participating and interacting in democracy.

This book is amongst the first of its kind in presenting a case study of voyeurism from a forensic psychology perspective and within the societal context. Simon Duff provides an in-depth description of the assessment, formulation, and treatment of a voyeur and offers a theoretical basis for the behaviour. The book begins by covering a variety of explanations and previous treatments for voyeurs, including learning theories and the aversive treatments that they give rise to. It then moves on to focus on one specific case study, a young man who has exhibited diversity in his voyeuristic offending, before examining relevant details of his experiences in order to develop a formulation of his thinking and behaviour. The formulation and resultant intervention are clearly and accessibly presented, followed by a discussion of how this case provides direction for further research, developments in our theoretical basis for understanding voyeurism, and directions for assessment and intervention.

I didn't know she was my student the first time I paid to watch her at Voyeur. Once she walked into my classroom, another smiling college freshman, I knew I should stop going. Stop watching. But I couldn't do it. Everything about her makes me want more, and once I realize she wants me too, the temptation becomes irresistible. The worst part is that she has no idea her professor is the one watching behind the glass. I just have to hope that once she finds out the truth, she wants the same thing I do. Because now that I've seen all of her, I can't look away.

aIt was my distinct pleasure to read Dennis James Bartelas collection. They are stories in the classic manner, scale models of a world that is both peculiarly Bartelas and a dead ringer for our own, replete with the flawed, pathetic, lost and yearning characters, at once drowning and exulting in lifeas ironies, who populate the tales of the modern masters of the form. His style has the sunny, effortless air of true literary art, casting sharp and profound shadows.a Michael Chabon, winner, Pulitzer Prize for Fiction, 2001