The study of sexual physiology-what happens, and why, and how to make it happen better-has been a paying career or a diverting sideline for scientists as far-ranging as Leonardo da Vinci and James Watson. The research has taken place behind the closed doors of laboratories, brothels, MRI centers, pig farms, sex-toy R&D labs, and Alfred Kinsey's attic. Mary Roach, "the funniest science writer in the country" (Burkhard Bilger of The New Yorker), devoted the past two years to stepping behind those doors. Can a person think herself to orgasm? Can a dead man get an erection? Is vaginal orgasm a myth? Why doesn't Viagra help women-or, for that matter, pandas? In Bonk, Roach shows us how and why sexual arousal and orgasm, two of the most complex, delightful, and amazing scientific phenomena on earth, can be so hard to achieve and what science is doing to slowly make the bedroom a more satisfying place.
My favorite Mary Roach yet.* Turns out we know even less about sex than we do about death and ghosts.
*Well, tied with Stiff, at least. And good thing that title was already taken, because I’m not sure she could have overcome the temptation.
“My first book was about human cadavers, and people assumed that I’m obsessed with death. Now that I have written books about both sex and death, God only knows what the word on the street is.”