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"Why, asks Rebecca Davis, did conversions seem so prevalent between the mid-1940s and the late 1990s, and why did people care? Examining the highly-publicized and controversial conversions of individuals include Clare Boothe Luce (Protestantism to Catholicism), Whittaker Chambers ("godless Communist" to Christianity), Sammy Davis, Jr., (Christianity to Judaism), and Muhammad Ali (Christianity to Islam), Davis roots this dynamic in Cold War culture, society, and politics. She reveals how the twin and often contradictory pressures to conform to a specific vision of Americanism while simultaneously celebrating the freedom of religion as a particularly American asset made conversions both attractive and threatening to Americans. Thanks to Davis's compelling case studies, we learn that the act of breaking from the religion of one's upbringing could be seen as a selfish, reckless, and nonconformist act, but conversion also accomplished significant political work, whether fighting communism in the case of ex-spy Chambers or battling racism in the case of Ali"--

Intro -- Contents -- Prologue: The Pursuit of Marital Happiness -- 1. Shaken Foundations -- 2. Searching for Economic and Sexual Security -- 3. Counseling Prosperity -- 4. Quantifying Compatibility -- 5. Sacred Partnerships -- 6. Marriage under Fire -- 7. The State of Marriage -- Epilogue: Twenty-First-Century Battlegrounds -- Abbreviations and Archival Collections -- Notes -- Acknowledgments -- Index.

Cover -- HETEROSEXUAL HISTORIES -- Title -- Copyright -- CONTENTS -- Introduction, or, Why Do the History of Heterosexuality? -- PART I: DIFFERENCE AND DESIRE SINCE THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY -- 1. Toward a Cultural Poetics of Desire in a World before Heterosexuality -- 2. The Strange Career of Interracial Heterosexuality -- 3. Age Disparity, Marriage, and the Gendering of Heterosexuality -- 4. "Deviant Heterosexuality" and Model-Minority Families: Asian American History and Racialized Heteronormativity -- PART II: DIFFERENCE, BODIES, AND POPULAR CULTURE -- 5. Defining Sexes, Desire, and Heterosexuality in Colonial British America -- 6. Spectacles of Restraint: Race, Excess, and Heterosexuality in Early American Print Culture -- 7. Heterosexual Inversions: Satire, Parody, and Comedy in the 1950s and 1960s -- PART III: EMBRACING AND CONTESTING LEGITIMACY -- 8. Holding the Line: Mexicans and Heterosexuality in the Nineteenth-Century West -- 9. Suburban Swing: Heterosexual Marriage and Spouse Swapping in the 1950s and 1960s -- 10. Race, Sexual Citizenship, and the Constitution of Nonmarital Motherhood -- PART IV: DISCOURSES OF DESIRE -- 11. Restoring "Virginal Conditions" and Reinstating the "Normal": Episiotomy in 1920 -- 12. How Heterosexuality Became Religious: Judeo-Christian Morality and the Remaking of Sex in Twentieth-Century America -- 13. The Price of Shame: Second-Wave Feminism and the Lewinsky-Clinton Scandal -- Acknowledgments -- About the Contributors -- Index.

Theory on the diffusion of innovations has been used to study the spread of new ideas & practices in a wide variety of settings, though most studies have been retrospective & have neglected to collect information on interpersonal communication networks. In addition, few have attempted to use the lessons from diffusion research to accelerate the diffusion of innovations. Outlined here is a method to accelerate the diffusion of innovations using opinion leaders. An optimal matching procedure is described, & computer simulations demonstrate how much faster diffusion occurs when initiated by opinion leaders. Limitations & extensions of the model are also discussed. 2 Figures, 44 References. Adapted from the source document.