Bonk : the curious coupling of science and sex

Title:

Author:

Summary:

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. The author 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 this book she shows us how and why sexual arousal and orgasm can be so hard to achieve and what science is doing to slowly make the bedroom a more satisfying place.

Edition:

First edition.

Contents:

The sausage, the porcupine and the agreeable Mrs. G: Highlights from the pioneers of human sexual response -- Dating the penis-camera: Can a woman find happiness with a machine? -- The princess and her pea: The woman who moved her clitoris, and other ruminations on intercourse orgasms -- The upsuck chronicles: Does orgasm boost fertility, and what do pigs know about it? -- What's going on in there?: The diverting world of coital imaging -- The Taiwanese fix and the penile pricking ring: Creative approaches to impotence -- The testicle pushers: If two are good, would three be better? -- Re-member me: Transplants, implants, and other penises of last resort -- The lady's boner: Is the clitoris a tiny penis? -- The prescription-strength vibrator: Masturbating for health -- The immaculate orgasm: Who needs genitals? -- Mind over vagina: Women are complicated -- What would Allah say?: The strange, brave career of Ahmed Shafik -- Monkey do: The secret sway of hormones -- "Persons studies in pairs": The lab that uncovered great sex.

Physical Description:

319 pages : illustrations ; 23 cm

Subject Term:

Sex (Biology)

Sex.

Human anatomy.

Publisher:

W.W. Norton & Company,

Electronic Access:

Table of contents
Additional Information at Google Books

Publication Date:

2008

ISBN:

9780393064643

9781607510000

9780393334791

Publication Information:

New York, N.Y. : W.W. Norton & Company, [2008]

Call Number:

612.6 ROACH

Holds: Copies:

Available:*

Item Barcode	Collection	Call Number	Status	Item Holds
33607002095639	Adult Nonfiction	612.6 ROACH	Searching... Unknown	Searching... Unavailable

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On Order

Summary

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.

Author Notes

Mary Roach was born and raised in Etna, New Hampshire. She has a BA degree in psychology from Wesleyan University. She spent a few years as a free-lance copy editor before she landed a job at the San Francisco Zoological Society turning out press releases. She then moved on to write humor pieces for such periodicals as The New York Times Magazine, The San Francisco Chronicle and Sports Illustrated. Her article "How to Win at Germ Warfare" was a National Magazine Award Finalist, in 1995. In 1996, her article on earthquake-proof bamboo houses took the Engineering Journalism Award. She published several books such as Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers (2003) and Packing for Mars (2010).

Mary's title Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War, made the New York Times Bestseller list in 2016.

(Bowker Author Biography)

Reviews (2)

Publisher's Weekly Review

Roach is not like other science writers. She doesn't write about genes or black holes or Schradinger's cat. Instead, she ventures out to the fringes of science, where the oddballs ponder how cadavers decay (in her debut, Stiff) and whether you can weigh a person's soul (in Spook). Now she explores the sexiest subject of all: sex, and such questions as, what is an orgasm? How is it possible for paraplegics to have them? What does woman want, and can a man give it to her if her clitoris is too far from her vagina? At times the narrative feels insubstantial and digressive (how much do you need to know about inseminating sows?), but Roach's ever-present eye and ear for the absurd and her loopy sense of humor make her a delectable guide through this unesteemed scientific outback. The payoff comes with subjects like female orgasm (yes, it's complicated), and characters like Ahmed Shafik, who defies Cairo's religious repressiveness to conduct his sex research. Roach's forays offer fascinating evidence of the full range of human weirdness, the nonsense that has often passed for medical science and, more poignantly, the extreme lengths to which people will go to find sexual satisfaction. (Apr.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Library Journal Review

After Stiff (about cadavers) and Spook (about the afterlife), Roach gets lively with this account of sexual physiology. With a 12-city tour. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.