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Sex has been used in ads for as long as many of us can remember. Now, there’s a new book coming out that documents the evolution of such usage: The Erotic History of Advertising.

The 394-page book, published by Amherst, N.Y.-based Prometheus Books, is by Tom Reichert, an advertising professor at the University of Alabama who is a contributor to the Encyclopedia of Advertising and is the lead editor of and a contributor to Sex in Advertising: Perspectives on the Erotic Appeal.

The heavily illustrated tome details the long history of the erotic in ads, from packs of Duke Cigarettes in the 1880s that contained cards showing scantily clad “women of the stage,” to 1930s White Owl cigars ads that showed couples kissing, to the present day.

“[The book] gives people a sense of history,” said Reichert, who said his research also seeks to discern if and how sex in advertising works.





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