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by: Mary Roach
List Price: $24.95Amazon.com's Price: $16.47 You Save: $8.48 (34%)Prices subject to change. Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 612.6
EAN: 9780393064643
ISBN: 0393064646
Label: W. W. Norton
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 288
Publication Date: April 07, 2008
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Sales Rank: 1920
Studio: W. W. Norton
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Editorial Review:
Product Description:
The best-selling author of Stiff turns her outrageous curiosity and infectious wit on the most alluring scientific subject of all: sex.
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. 16 illustrations.
Customer Reviews
Average Rating: 
Rating: - Strange yet Interesting
I have read many of Stephen King's short stories, yet none of them could make me cringe the way this book can. It is disgustingly irresistable and once you start reading it's difficult to stop. This book discusses the sly ways that science has evaded the societal norms and researched the human reproductive system. Mrs. Roach goes to great lenghts to research for this book and it pays off as the writer seems well informed and knowledgable on the subject. If i had to describe Mary Roach in a word it ... Read More
Rating: - A Glass of Wine, a Sex Toy, and Thee
Mary Roach's humorous and disarming exploration of sexual areas of sensitivity (literal and metaphorical) is an impressively researched book that will lead you through various stages of shock and awe, frequent sensations of the dawning of understanding, and moments of downright poignancy. It is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in history, sex, things that get society's (and research subject's) underwear repeatedly in a bundle, or the anatomy of parts privy.
I'm a family physician. ... Read More
Rating:  - Didn't learn this in biology class!
Sex has always had its humorous aspects for me, and I'm very happy to learn that Mary Roach has the same feeling. This book really covers many facets of sex and sexuality, but it does it with as funny twist, which takes it out of the realm of the pornographic and puts it into perspective as a scientific study (even though some of the "science" is a bit suspect). The casual reader will probably learn a lot of things about sex that he or she didn't know, and that he or she could have lived a long and happy ... Read More
Rating: - Bonk
Another Mary Roach classic: everthing you wanted to know about sex, but did not have a clue to ask!
Rating: - Prepare to laugh
I had read "Stiff" and loved it. Not a lot of writers get me laughing out loud, Ms Roach does, consistently. She does find the absurd in human expectations and endeavors, but also enlightens. I did learn I am unable to find any humor in a reference to a six year old boy being killed ("beaned" as the author puts it) by an oxygen tank during an MRI, and wished she'd seriously assaulted the tiger penis and rhino horn use thinking of ancient Chinese medicine, since the practice continues today. But I recognize ... Read More
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