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Sexual Nature/Sexual Culture
Paul R. Abramson, Steven D. Pinkerton In this multidisciplinary study of human sexuality, an international team of scholars looks at the influences of nature and nurture, biology and culture, and sex and gender in the sexual experiences of humans and other primates.

Using as its center the idea that sexual pleasure is the primary motivational force behind human sexuality and that reproduction is simply a byproduct of the pleasurability of sex, this book examines sexuality at the individual, societal, and cultural levels. Beginning with a look at the evolution of sexuality in humans and other primates, the essays in the first section examine the sexual ingenuity of primates, the dominant theories of sexual behavior, the differences in male and female sexual interest and behavior, and the role of physical attractiveness in mate selection. The focus then shifts to biological approaches to sexuality, especially the genetic and hormonal origins of sexual orientation, gender, and pleasure.

The essays go on to look at the role of pleasure in different cultures. Included are essays on love among the tribespeople of the Brazilian rain forest and the regulation of adolescent sexuality in India. Finally, several contributors look at the methodological issues in the study of human sexuality, paying particular attention to the problems with research that relies on people's memories of their sexual experiences.

The contributors are Angela Pattatucci, Dean Hamer, David Greenberg, Frans de Waal, Mary McDonald Pavelka, Kim Wallen, Donald Symons, Heino Meyer-Bahlburg, Jean D. Wilson, Donald Tuzin, Lawrence Cohen, Thomas Gregor, Lenore Manderson, Robert C. Bailey, Alice Schlegel, Edward H. Kaplan, Richard Berk, Paul R. Abramson, Paul Okami, and Stephen D. Pinkerton.

Spanning the chasm of the nature versus nurture debate, Sexual Nature/Sexual Culture is a look at human sexuality as a complex interaction of genetic potentials and cultural influences. This book will be of interest to a wide range of readers—from scholars and students in psychology, anthropology, sociology, and history to clinicians, researchers, and others seeking to understand the many dimensions of sexuality.

"If we ever expect to solve the sexually based problems that modern societies face, we must encourage investigations of human sexual behavior. Moreover, those investigations should employ a broad range of disciplines—looking at sex from all angles, which is precisely what Sexual Nature, Sexual Culture does."—Mike May, American Scientist

"...This timely and relevant book reminds us that we cannot rely on simple solutions to complex problems. It represents a transdiciplinary approach integrating knowledge from diverse fields and provides the reader with a challenging and rewarding experience. Especially for those who are involved in teaching human sexuality to medical students and other health care professionals, this book is highly recommended."—Gerald Wiviortt, M.D., Journal of Nervous and Mental Disease

"In short, this volume contains much to stimulate, inform, and amuse, in varying proportions. What more can one ask?"—Pierre L. van den Berghe, Journal of the History of Sexuality

"...the book succeeds in bring together some of the sharpest thinkers in the field of human sexuality, and goes a long way toward clarifying the diverse perspectives that currently exist."—David M. Buss and Todd K. Shackelford, Quarterly Review of Biology
With Pleasure: Thoughts on the Nature of Human Sexuality
Paul R. Abramson, Steven D. Pinkerton Challenging everything from the mandates of the Catholic Church to the hotly debated ethics of pornography, and from the controversy surrounding gay rights to issues of gender and feminism, With Pleasure explores a new theory of human sexuality that ignites every hot topic in the public domain. What role, authors Paul Abramson and Steven Pinkerton ask, does sexual pleasure play in our lives? Is the pursuit of sexual enjoyment in our blood? Our brains? Our very nature? Regardless of the source, it can be agreed that the joys of sex are widely appreciated. Why, then, is pleasure so often overlooked in discussions of sexual behavior, and why do cultural, historical, and religious treatises so often fail to emphasize, or outright ignore, this obvious aspect of human sexuality?
Responding to these and many other questions about our most private affairs, With Pleasure provides a profoundly original challenge to the cherished truisms of human sexuality. Abramson and Pinkerton proclaim the paramount importance of pleasure, while at the same time overthrowing traditional ideas about gender, pornography, contraception, homosexuality, abortion, and much more. Supported by rigorous research and co-written by one of the foremost authorities on sex, With Pleasure argues that human sexuality cannot be understood if its significance is limited to reproduction alone. The authors posit that in humans reproduction itself occurs as a byproduct of pleasure—not the other way around—and that it is the strong drive for pleasure that makes people overcome many obstacles—and even life-threatening dangers such as AIDS—to have sex. Ranging from discussions about the church to current debates about pornography, and from evolutionary theory to questions about the future of sex and pleasure, Abramson and Pinkerton argue persuasively that the pleasurability of sex cannot be restricted to purely reproductive behavior.
With Pleasure advances a startling and original new theory about human sexuality, one which the authors believe will replace all existing notions about sex. The book, standing in direct and deliberate opposition to traditions that try to confine sexuality to procreation, is sure to ignite a firestorm of controversy.
Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles
Robin Baker Published to acclaim and controversy a decade ago, Sperm Wars is a revolutionary thesis about sex that turned centuries-old biological assumptions on their head.

Evolution has programmed men to conquer and monopolize women while women, without ever knowing they are doing it, seek the best genetic input on offer from potential sexual partners.

In this book, best-selling author Robin Baker reveals these new facts of life: ten percent of children are not fathered by their "fathers;" less than one percent of a man’s sperm is capable of fertilizing anything (the rest is there to fight off all other men’s sperm); "smart" vaginal mucus encourages some sperm but blocks others; and a woman is far more likely to conceive through a casual fling than through sex with her regular partner.

It’s no wonder that Sperm Wars is a classic of popular science writing that will surprise, entertain, and even shock.
Strange Bedfellows: The Surprising Connection Between Sex, Evolution and Monogamy
David P. Barash, Judith Eve Lipton In The Myth of Monogamy, husband and wife David P. Barash (an evolutionary biologist) and Judith Eve Lipton (a psychiatrist), stunned the public by showing how rare monogamy is in nature. Now, in Strange Bedfellows, they look at the other side of the coin: how biology actually promotes monogamy in some species and how these lessons apply to human beings.

An accessible work of science that is relevant to our intimate daily life, Strange Bedfellows will reassure some people, surprise others, and engage everyone.

David P. Barash and Judith Eve Lipton have co-authored six books, including The Myth of Monogamy and Making Sense of Sex.
Perv: The Sexual Deviant in All of Us
Jesse Bering “As a sex writer, Jesse Bering is fearless—and peerless.” —Dan Savage

“You are a sexual deviant. A pervert, through and through.” We may not want to admit it, but as the award-winning columnist and psychologist Jesse Bering reveals in Perv, there is a spectrum of perversion along which we all sit. Whether it’s voyeurism, exhibitionism, or your run-of-the-mill foot fetish, we all possess a suite of sexual tastes as unique as our fingerprints—and as secret as the rest of the skeletons we’ve hidden in our closets.

Combining cutting-edge studies and critiques of landmark research and conclusions drawn by Sigmund Freud, Alfred Kinsey, and the DSM-5, Bering pulls the curtain back on paraphilias, arguing that sexual deviance is commonplace. He explores the countless fetishists of the world, including people who wear a respectable suit during the day and handcuff a willing sexual partner at night. But he also takes us into the lives of “erotic outliers,” such as a woman who falls madly in love with the Eiffel Tower; a pair of deeply affectionate identical twins; those with a particular penchant for statues; and others who are enamored of crevices not found on the human body.

Moving from science to politics, psychology, history, and his own reflections on growing up gay in America, Bering confronts hypocrisy, prejudice, and harm as they relate to sexuality on a global scale. Humanizing so-called deviants while at the same time asking serious questions about the differences between thought and action, he presents us with a challenge: to understand that our best hope of solving some of the most troubling problems of our age hinges entirely on the amoral study of sex.

As kinky as it is compassionate, illuminating, and engrossing, Perv is an irresistible and deeply personal book. “I can’t promise you an orgasm at the end of our adventure,” Bering writes, “but I can promise you a better understanding of why you get the ones you do.”
The Bonobo Way: The Evolution of Peace Through Pleasure
Dr. Susan Block In this unique and paradigm-changing book, internationally acclaimed and controversial sex educator Dr. Susan Block offers a brilliant new view of human sexuality, war, peace and community, inspired by a role model who isn't even human: our closest genetic cousin, the bonobo. 
 
With a provocative, humorous and engaging style that makes science fun and ecology erotic, The Bonobo Way boldly asks: What do these great apes know about sex — and the rest of life — that we don't?
 
Here are some things we know about bonobos: 
 
They have lots of sex. 
They never kill each other. 
They empower the females. 
They stay younger longer. 
They live in peace through pleasure. 
 
And we thought humans were the smartest apes! 
 
For decades, experts have used the "killer ape" paradigm to explain why humans murder, make war, bomb and behead each other, and supposedly always will. Sure, our common chimp cousins kill, but do they tell the whole tale? 
 
Luckily, no. The Bonobo Way shows the other side of the story, presenting the bonobos as a new great ape paradigm for humanity that could change the world... or at least improve your love life. 
 
From the lush depths of the rainforest to the satin sheets of your bedroom, Dr. Block takes you on a fascinating journey, weaving stories, studies, theories and fantasies into possibilities and a practical path of action, presenting a very different kind of "12-Step Program" to release your "inner bonobo," help save the real bonobos from extinction and energize all facets of your life. 
 
Whether you don't know bonobos from bananas, or you think you know all about these amazing creatures, The Bonobo Way will show you the way to a happier, healthier, sexier life, and a more peaceful, sustainable culture.

More praise for The Bonobo Way: 

"Amazing! Dr. Block is an eco-sex visionary." 
Annie Sprinkle, Ph.D., Eco-Sex Artist 

"All those interested in human happiness should read this book." 
James W. Prescott, Ph.D., author of Body Pleasure and the Origins of Violence
How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like
Paul Bloom “Engaging, evocative. . . . [Bloom] is a supple, clear writer, and his parade of counterintuitive claims about pleasure is beguiling.”—NPRWhy is an artistic masterpiece worth millions more than a convincing forgery? Pleasure works in mysterious ways, as Paul Bloom reveals in this investigation of what we desire and why. Drawing on a wealth of surprising studies, Bloom investigates pleasures noble and seamy, lofty and mundane, to reveal that our enjoyment of a given thing is determined not by what we can see and touch but by our beliefs about that thing’s history, origin, and deeper nature.
The Nature of Human Nature
Dr. Carin Bondar This book explores the quirky behaviors of Homo sapiens in the context of the rest of the animal kingdom.
Sex of Your Dreams
Carol Cummings Some people dream about their mail carrier. Or their best friend’s husband. Or how about that one about the boss? Sexual dreams are full of meaning – often not at all sexual – but most people are embarrassed to talk about them. Carol Cummings hears from thousands of these people every year in her role as a popular radio call-in dream interpreter. In The Sex of Your Dreams, she shows readers how to interpret their own dreams to discover the hidden meanings within. Through lots of sample dreams and fun quizzes and exercise, this book will show readers how vast and psychologically relevant the world of erotic dreams can be.

Readers will learn: How men’s erotic dreams differ from women’s What rape dreams signify Whether cheating dreams are really premonitions How to find the lover in your dreams
Why Is Sex Fun?: The Evolution Of Human Sexuality
Jared Diamond To us humans the sex lives of many animals seem weird. In fact, by comparison with all the other animals, we are the ones with the weird sex lives. How did that come to be?Just count our bizarre ways. We are the only social species to insist on carrying out sex privately. Stranger yet, we have sex at any time, even when the female can’t be fertilized (for example, because she is already pregnant, post-menopausal, or between fertile cycles). A human female doesn’t know her precise time of fertility and certainly doesn’t advertise it to human males by the striking color changes, smells, and sounds used by other female mammals.Why do we differ so radically in these and other important aspects of our sexuality from our closest ancestor, the apes? Why does the human female, virtually alone among mammals go through menopause? Why does the human male stand out as one of the few mammals to stay (often or usually) with the female he impregnates, to help raise the children that he sired? Why is the human penis so unnecessarily large?There is no one better qualified than Jared Diamond—renowned expert in the fields of physiology and evolutionary biology and award-winning author—to explain the evolutionary forces that operated on our ancestors to make us sexually different. With wit and a wealth of fascinating examples, he explains how our sexuality has been as crucial as our large brains and upright posture in our rise to human status.
Why Is Sex Fun?: The Evolution Of Human Sexuality
Jared Diamond To us humans the sex lives of many animals seem weird. In fact, by comparison with all the other animals, we are the ones with the weird sex lives. How did that come to be?Just count our bizarre ways. We are the only social species to insist on carrying out sex privately. Stranger yet, we have sex at any time, even when the female can’t be fertilized (for example, because she is already pregnant, post-menopausal, or between fertile cycles). A human female doesn’t know her precise time of fertility and certainly doesn’t advertise it to human males by the striking color changes, smells, and sounds used by other female mammals.Why do we differ so radically in these and other important aspects of our sexuality from our closest ancestor, the apes? Why does the human female, virtually alone among mammals go through menopause? Why does the human male stand out as one of the few mammals to stay (often or usually) with the female he impregnates, to help raise the children that he sired? Why is the human penis so unnecessarily large?There is no one better qualified than Jared Diamond—renowned expert in the fields of physiology and evolutionary biology and award-winning author—to explain the evolutionary forces that operated on our ancestors to make us sexually different. With wit and a wealth of fascinating examples, he explains how our sexuality has been as crucial as our large brains and upright posture in our rise to human status.
Evolutionary Psychology: A Beginner's Guide
Robin Dunbar, Louise Barrett, John Lycett Starting with its origins in the work of Charles Darwin, the book covers all the key areas of evolutionary psychology, including the role played by genetics in our sexual behavior, parental decision-making, and how babies learn about and adapt to the world.
Body Language
Julius Fast This classic books introduces kinetics, the science of non-verbal communication, which is used to analyze the common gestures we use and observe every day, gestures which reveal our deepest feelings and hidden thoughts to total strangers—if they know how to read them.
How sex can keep you slim
Abraham I Friedman
What Your Mother Never Told You About Sex
Hilda Hutcherson A gynecologist "delivers the kind of frank, down-to-earth information about sex and sexuality that so many of us need and crave. With facts, drawings and plenty of plain-spoken advice, this is a great book to share with your daughter when it's time to have 'the talk'" (Linda Villarosa, author of Body & Soul: The Black Woman's Guide to Physical Health).
The Act of Love
Harvey T Leatham, MD and Hugh A Jones
Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex
Olivia Judson Dr. Tatianas Sex Advice to All Creation is a unique guidebook to sex. It reveals, for example, when necrophilia is acceptable and who should commit bestiality with whom. It discloses the best time to have a sex change, how to have a virgin birth, and when to eat your lover. It also advises on more mundane matterssuch as male pregnancy and the joys of a detachable penis.Entertaining, funny, and marvelously illuminating, the book comprises letters from all creatures worried about their bizarre sex lives to the wise Dr. Tatiana, the only sex columnist in creation with a prodigious knowledge of evolutionary biology. Fusing natural history with advice to the lovelorn, blending wit and rigor, she is able to reassure her anxious correspondents that although the acts they describe might sound appalling and unnatural, they are all perfectly normalso long as you are not a human. In the process, she explains the science behind it all, from Darwins theory of sexual selection to why sexual reproduction exists at all. Applying human standards to the natural world, in the end she reveals the wonders of both.
Who's Been Sleeping in Your Head: The Secret World of Sexual Fantasies
Brett Kahr In the largest study ever undertaken on sexual fantasy, world-renowned psychotherapist and researcher Brett Kahr reveals the astonishing truths behind secrecy, shame, and taboo in this groundbreaking book based on surveys of 23,000 men and women from eighteen to ninety years of age. The definitive account of what our fantasies tell us about ourselves, Who’s Been Sleeping in Your Head? overturns conventional wisdom about sexuality today.
Everything You Know About Sex Is Wrong: The Disinformation Guide to the Extremes of Human Sexuality
Russ Kick Orgasms, sexual inventions, spirituality, high-tech porn, gender-blending, hustling, masturbation, politics, airplane sex, disabilities, sex magick, biblical erotica, advertising, first times, sex in space, asexuality, group sex . . . are you ready for Disinformation’s look at the world of sex?

Master anthologizer Russ Kick has immersed himself in the many and varied worlds of sex writing, producing a definitive collection exposing reality that’s way, way stranger than XXX fiction. Profiled in The New York Times as an “information archaeologist,” Russ digs where others would not think to look for delicious details on the present, past, and future of sex, including:

The first-ever look at the FBI’s porn collection (the Obscene Reference File), complete with reproduced documents
FAA reports about people having sex on commercial flights—the so-called “mile-high club”
A look at brilliant, kinky, and scarce sex-zines, such as Frighten the Horses, Taste of Latex, Future Sex, and Pucker Up, as well as Sexology, published by Hugo Gernsback, the father of science fiction
The forgotten sex books of Charles Atlas (“Hey, quit kicking sand in our faces, you bully!”)

This massive, oversized anthology features a panoply of sexperts, everyone from prostitutes to professors, legends to newcomers, sexual revolutionaries to sexologists and beyond, providing a varied and unexpected look at sex, challenging our notions of what is possible and in turn exciting, enervating, frightening, and freaking us out.

Russ Kick is the editor of You Are Being Lied To, Everything You Know Is Wrong, and Abuse Your Illusions. He is the author of 50 Things You’re Not Supposed To Know Volumes 1 & 2 and The Disinformation Book of Lists. He lives in Tucson, Arizona.
Beauty Junkies: Inside Our $15 Billion Obsession With Cosmetic Surgery
Alex Kuczynski A star writer for the New York Times Styles section captures the follies, frauds, and fanaticism that fuel the American pursuit of youth and beauty in a wickedly revealing excursion into the burgeoning business of cosmetic enhancement.

Americans are aging faster and getting fatter than any other population on the planet. At the same time, our popular notions of perfect beauty have become so strict it seems even Barbie wouldn’t have a chance of making it into the local beauty pageant.

Aging may be a natural fact of life, but for a growing number of Americans its hallmarks—wrinkles, love handles, jiggling flesh—are seen as obstacles to be conquered on the path to lasting, flawless beauty. In Beauty Junkies Alex Kuczynski, whose sly wit and fearless reporting in the Times has won her fans across the country, delivers a fresh and irresistible look at America's increasingly desperate pursuit of ultimate beauty by any means necessary.

From a group of high-maintenance New York City women who devote themselves to preserving their looks twenty-four hours a day, to a “surgery safari” in South Africa complete with “after” photographs of magically rejuvenated patients posing with wild animals, to a podiatrist's office in Manhattan where a “foot face-lift” provides women with the right fit for their $700 Jimmy Choos, Kuczynski portrays the all-American quest for self-transformation in all its extremes. In New York, lawyers become Botox junkies in an effort to remain poker-faced. In Los Angeles, women of an uncertain age nip and tuck their most private areas, so that every inch of their bodies is as taut as their lifted faces. Across the country, young women graduating from high school receive gifts of breast implants – from their parents.

As medicine and technology stretch the boundaries of biology, Kuczynski asks whether cosmetic surgery might even be part of human evolution, a kind of cosmetic survival of the fittest – or firmest? With incomparable portraits of obsessive patients and the equally obsessed doctors who cater to their dreams, Beauty Junkies examines the hype, the hope, and the questionable ethics surrounding the advent of each new miraculous technique. Lively and entertaining, thought-provoking and disturbing, Beauty Junkies is destined to be one of the most talked-about books of the season.
Crazy Little Thing: Why Love and Sex Drive Us Mad
Liz Langley Crazy Little Thing is a look at why we want to be in love and the burbling, boiling soup of endorphins, hormones, and neurotransmitters that spill from our brain to make us do things that would otherwise be viewed as insane. Investigative journalist Liz Langley traveled the country to research and interview singularly love-mad folks who maimed, murdered, and married. Langley reveals the science of love and lust, as well as very human stories: a spouse who can't stop loving her criminally psychotic husband, even after he threw acid in her face; the sweet romance between alligator-skinned sideshow performers; and a man whose neurons drive his necrophilia. Langley reveals the control our chemicals have over us in a hilarious, confounding — and too strange to be anything but true — look at love.
Crazy Little Thing: Why Love and Sex Drive Us Mad
Liz Langley Crazy Little Thing is a look at why we want to be in love and the burbling, boiling soup of endorphins, hormones, and neurotransmitters that spill from our brain to make us do things that would otherwise be viewed as insane. Investigative journalist Liz Langley traveled the country to research and interview singularly love-mad folks who maimed, murdered, and married. Langley reveals the science of love and lust, as well as very human stories: a spouse who can't stop loving her criminally psychotic husband, even after he threw acid in her face; the sweet romance between alligator-skinned sideshow performers; and a man whose neurons drive his necrophilia. Langley reveals the control our chemicals have over us in a hilarious, confounding — and too strange to be anything but true — look at love.
Why Do Men Have Nipples? Hundreds of Questions You'd Only Ask a Doctor After Your Third Martini
Mark Leyner, Billy Goldberg Is There a Doctor in the House?

Say you’re at a party. You’ve had a martini or three, and you mingle through the crowd, wondering how long you need to stay before going out for pizza. Suddenly you’re introduced to someone new, Dr. Nice Tomeetya. You forget the pizza. Now is the perfect time to bring up all those strange questions you’d like to ask during an office visit with your own doctor but haven’t had the guts (or more likely the time) to do so. You’re filled with liquid courage . . . now is your chance! If you’ve ever wanted to ask a doctor . . .

•How do people in wheelchairs have sex?

•Why do I get a killer headache when I suck down my milkshake too fast?

•Can I lose my contact lens inside my head forever?

•Why does asparagus make my pee smell?

•Why do old people grow hair on their ears?

•Is the old adage “beer before liquor, never sicker, liquor before beer . . .” really true?

. . . then Why Do Men Have Nipples? is the book for you.

Compiled by Billy Goldberg, an emergency medicine physician, and Mark Leyner, bestselling author and well-known satirist, Why Do Men Have Nipples? offers real factual and really funny answers to some of the big questions about the oddities of our bodies.
Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters
Alan S. Miller, Satoshi Kanazawa Now available in paperback—a provocative new look at biology, evolution, and human behavior “as disturbing [as it is] fascinating” (Publishers Weekly).

Why are most neurosurgeons male and most kindergarten teachers female? Why aren’t there more women on death row? Why do so many male politicians ruin their careers with sex scandals? Why and how do we really fall in love? This engaging book uses the latest research from the field of evolutionary psychology to shed light on why we do the things we do—from life plans to everyday decisions. With a healthy disregard for political correctness, Miller and Kanazawa reexamine the fact that our brains and bodies are hardwired to carry out an evolutionary mission— an inescapable human nature that actually stopped evolving about 10,000 years ago.
The Naked Ape
Desmond Morris
The Naked Ape
Desmond Morris
Intimate Behavior: A Zoologist's Classic Study of Human Intimacy
Desmond Morris Twenty-five years after it first caused a splash in the scientific and literary worlds, INTIMATE BEHAVIOUR is still one of the best chronicles of human intimacy. With a masterful and entertaining eye, Desmond Morris, bestselling author of THE NAKED APE and THE HUMAN ZOO, analyzes the roots of human intimacy, from the handshake through the twelve stages that people pass through on their way to the total sexual embrace.

Morris contends that the months just before and after birth are when the seeds of intimacy are planted and are critical to development. From the loving attention of the mother, the child learns and responds with intimate gestures of his or her own. He argues that human adults follow certain patterns of intimate behaviour that are based on these infant experiences for their entire lives.

In addition to sexual intimacy, Morris discussed social intimacy, intimacy substitutes, object intimacy, and self-intimacy. Complete with a new preface by the author, INTIMATE BEHAVIOUR is a provocative view of humans’ need to touch and to be touched, to love and to be loved.
Intimate Behavior: A Zoologist's Classic Study of Human Intimacy
Desmond Morris Twenty-five years after it first caused a splash in the scientific and literary worlds, INTIMATE BEHAVIOUR is still one of the best chronicles of human intimacy. With a masterful and entertaining eye, Desmond Morris, bestselling author of THE NAKED APE and THE HUMAN ZOO, analyzes the roots of human intimacy, from the handshake through the twelve stages that people pass through on their way to the total sexual embrace.

Morris contends that the months just before and after birth are when the seeds of intimacy are planted and are critical to development. From the loving attention of the mother, the child learns and responds with intimate gestures of his or her own. He argues that human adults follow certain patterns of intimate behaviour that are based on these infant experiences for their entire lives.

In addition to sexual intimacy, Morris discussed social intimacy, intimacy substitutes, object intimacy, and self-intimacy. Complete with a new preface by the author, INTIMATE BEHAVIOUR is a provocative view of humans’ need to touch and to be touched, to love and to be loved.
A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire
Ogi Ogas, Sai Gaddam Two maverick neuroscientists use the world's largest psychology experiment-the Internet-to study the private activities of millions of men and women around the world, unveiling a revolutionary and shocking new vision of human desire that overturns conventional thinking.

For his groundbreaking sexual research, Alfred Kinsey and his team interviewed 18,000 people, relying on them to honestly report their most intimate experiences. Using the Internet, the neuroscientists Ogas and Gaddam quietly observed the raw sexual behaviors of half a billion people. By combining their observations with neuroscience and animal research, these two young neuroscientists finally answer the long-disputed question: what do people really like? Ogas and Gaddam's findings are transforming the way scientists and therapists think about sexual desire.

In their startling book, Ogas and Gaddam analyze a "billion wicked thoughts" on the Internet: a billion Web searches, a million individual search histories, a million erotic stories, a half-million erotic videos, a million Web sites, millions of online personal ads, and many other enormous sources of sexual data in order to understand the true differences between male and female desires, including:

•Men and women have hardwired sexual cues analogous to our hardwired tastes-there are sexual versions of sweet, sour, salty, savory, and bitter. But men and women are wired with different sets of cues.

•The male sexual brain resembles a reckless hunter, while the female sexual brain resembles a cautious detective agency.

•Men form their sexual interests during adolescence and rarely change. Women's sexual interests are plastic and change frequently.

•The male sexual brain is an "or gate": A single stimulus can arouse it. The female sexual brain is an "and gate": It requires many simultaneous stimuli to arouse it.

•When it comes to sexual arousal, men prefer overweight women to underweight women, and a significant number of men seek out erotic images of women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s.

•Women enjoy writing and sharing erotic stories with other women. The fastest growing genre of erotic stories for women are stories about two heterosexual men having sex.

•Though the male sexual brain is much more different from the female sexual brain than is commonly believed, the sexual brain of gay men is virtually identical to that of straight men.

Featuring cutting-edge, jaw-dropping science, this wildly entertaining and controversial book helps readers understand their partner's sexual desires with a depth of knowledge unavailable from any other source. Its fascinating and occasionally disturbing findings will rock our modern understanding of sexuality, just as Kinsey's reports did sixty years ago.
A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the World's Largest Experiment Reveals about Human Desire
Ogi Ogas, Sai Gaddam Two maverick neuroscientists use the world's largest psychology experiment-the Internet-to study the private activities of millions of men and women around the world, unveiling a revolutionary and shocking new vision of human desire that overturns conventional thinking.

For his groundbreaking sexual research, Alfred Kinsey and his team interviewed 18,000 people, relying on them to honestly report their most intimate experiences. Using the Internet, the neuroscientists Ogas and Gaddam quietly observed the raw sexual behaviors of half a billion people. By combining their observations with neuroscience and animal research, these two young neuroscientists finally answer the long-disputed question: what do people really like? Ogas and Gaddam's findings are transforming the way scientists and therapists think about sexual desire.

In their startling book, Ogas and Gaddam analyze a "billion wicked thoughts" on the Internet: a billion Web searches, a million individual search histories, a million erotic stories, a half-million erotic videos, a million Web sites, millions of online personal ads, and many other enormous sources of sexual data in order to understand the true differences between male and female desires, including:

•Men and women have hardwired sexual cues analogous to our hardwired tastes-there are sexual versions of sweet, sour, salty, savory, and bitter. But men and women are wired with different sets of cues.

•The male sexual brain resembles a reckless hunter, while the female sexual brain resembles a cautious detective agency.

•Men form their sexual interests during adolescence and rarely change. Women's sexual interests are plastic and change frequently.

•The male sexual brain is an "or gate": A single stimulus can arouse it. The female sexual brain is an "and gate": It requires many simultaneous stimuli to arouse it.

•When it comes to sexual arousal, men prefer overweight women to underweight women, and a significant number of men seek out erotic images of women in their 40s, 50s, and 60s.

•Women enjoy writing and sharing erotic stories with other women. The fastest growing genre of erotic stories for women are stories about two heterosexual men having sex.

•Though the male sexual brain is much more different from the female sexual brain than is commonly believed, the sexual brain of gay men is virtually identical to that of straight men.

Featuring cutting-edge, jaw-dropping science, this wildly entertaining and controversial book helps readers understand their partner's sexual desires with a depth of knowledge unavailable from any other source. Its fascinating and occasionally disturbing findings will rock our modern understanding of sexuality, just as Kinsey's reports did sixty years ago.
A Billion Wicked Thoughts: What the Internet Tells Us About Sexual Relationships
Ogi Ogas, Sai Gaddam The Book on Sex

Want to know what really turns your partner on? A Billion Wicked Thoughts offers the clearest picture ever of the differences between male and female sexuality and the teeming diversity of human desire. What makes men attracted to images and so predictable in their appetites? What makes the set up to a romantic evening so important for a woman? Why are women’s desires so hard to predict? Neuroscientists Ogi Ogas and Sai Gaddam reveal the mechanics of sexual relationships based on their extensive research into the mountains of new data on human behavior available in online entertainment and traffic around the world. Not since Alfred Kinsey in the 1950s has there been such a revolution in our knowledge of what is really going on in the bedroom. What Ogas and Gaddam learned, and now share, will deepen and enrich the way you, and your partner, think and talk about sex.
Sex & Sensibility: Reflections on Forbidden Mirrors and the Will to Censor
Marcia Pally Marcia Pally, a social scientist at New York University, examines the hypothesis that government censorhip of offensive books and images will reduce anti-social behavior, including delinquency, violence, and rape. After extensive review of the sociological, psychological, criminological, and cross-cultural research, Pally finds that the causes of anti-social conduct lie in the life experiences of perpetrators, which are unfortunately not likely to be addressed by merely removing images from the public sphere. Moreover, government censhorship in one area may open the door to censoship in other arenas and thus threaten democracy. Pally notes that those in favor of censorship and those opposed share the goal of reducing violence and abuse, and so both might use their energies to further substantive solutions to anti-social conduct. This, Pally suggests, will require a deep look at our values, family structures, parenting, educational systems, and other of our basic institutions.
Conceiving Sexuality: Approaches to Sex Research in a Postmodern World
Richard G. Parker, John H. Gagnon First Published in 1995. Routledge is an imprint of Taylor & Francis, an informa company.
Mating in Captivity: Unlocking Erotic Intelligence
Esther Perel One of the world’s most respected voices on erotic intelligence, Esther Perel offers a bold, provocative new take on intimacy and sex. Mating in Captivity invites us to explore the paradoxical union of domesticity and sexual desire, and explains what it takes to bring lust home.

Drawing on more than twenty years of experience as a couples therapist, Perel examines the complexities of sustaining desire. Through case studies and lively discussion, Perel demonstrates how more exciting, playful, and even poetic sex is possible in long-term relationships. Wise, witty, and as revelatory as it is straightforward, Mating in Captivity is a sensational book that will transform the way you live and love.
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
Mary Roach “Rich in dexterous innuendo, laugh-out-loud humor and illuminating fact. It’s compulsively readable.” ―Los Angeles Times Book ReviewIn ?Bonk, ?the best-selling author of Stiff turns her outrageous curiosity and insight on the most alluring scientific subject of all: sex. Can a person think herself to orgasm? Why doesn't Viagra help women-or, for that matter, pandas? Can a dead man get an erection? Is vaginal orgasm a myth? Mary 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 make the bedroom a more satisfying place. 16 illustrations
Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality
Christopher Ryan, Cacilda Jethá Since Darwin's day, we've been told that sexual monogamy comes naturally to our species. Mainstream science—as well as religious and cultural institutions—has maintained that men and women evolved in families in which a man's possessions and protection were exchanged for a woman's fertility and fidelity. But this narrative is collapsing. Fewer and fewer couples are getting married, and divorce rates keep climbing as adultery and flagging libido drag down even seemingly solid marriages.
How can reality be reconciled with the accepted narrative? It can't be, according to renegade thinkers Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá. While debunking almost everything we "know" about sex, they offer a bold alternative explanation in this provocative and brilliant book.
Ryan and Jethá's central contention is that human beings evolved in egalitarian groups that shared food, child care, and, often, sexual partners. Weaving together convergent, frequently overlooked evidence from anthropology, archaeology, primatology, anatomy, and psychosexuality, the authors show how far from human nature monogamy really is. Human beings everywhere and in every era have confronted the same familiar, intimate situations in surprisingly different ways. The authors expose the ancient roots of human sexuality while pointing toward a more optimistic future illuminated by our innate capacities for love, cooperation, and generosity.
With intelligence, humor, and wonder, Ryan and Jethá show how our promiscuous past haunts our struggles over monogamy, sexual orientation, and family dynamics. They explore why long-term fidelity can be so difficult for so many; why sexual passion tends to fade even as love deepens; why many middle-aged men risk everything for transient affairs with younger women; why homosexuality persists in the face of standard evolutionary logic; and what the human body reveals about the prehistoric origins of modern sexuality.
In the tradition of the best historical and scientific writing, Sex at Dawn unapologetically upends unwarranted assumptions and unfounded conclusions while offering a revolutionary understanding of why we live and love as we do.
Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality
Christopher Ryan, Cacilda Jethá Since Darwin's day, we've been told that sexual monogamy comes naturally to our species. Mainstream science—as well as religious and cultural institutions—has maintained that men and women evolved in families in which a man's possessions and protection were exchanged for a woman's fertility and fidelity. But this narrative is collapsing. Fewer and fewer couples are getting married, and divorce rates keep climbing as adultery and flagging libido drag down even seemingly solid marriages.
How can reality be reconciled with the accepted narrative? It can't be, according to renegade thinkers Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá. While debunking almost everything we "know" about sex, they offer a bold alternative explanation in this provocative and brilliant book.
Ryan and Jethá's central contention is that human beings evolved in egalitarian groups that shared food, child care, and, often, sexual partners. Weaving together convergent, frequently overlooked evidence from anthropology, archaeology, primatology, anatomy, and psychosexuality, the authors show how far from human nature monogamy really is. Human beings everywhere and in every era have confronted the same familiar, intimate situations in surprisingly different ways. The authors expose the ancient roots of human sexuality while pointing toward a more optimistic future illuminated by our innate capacities for love, cooperation, and generosity.
With intelligence, humor, and wonder, Ryan and Jethá show how our promiscuous past haunts our struggles over monogamy, sexual orientation, and family dynamics. They explore why long-term fidelity can be so difficult for so many; why sexual passion tends to fade even as love deepens; why many middle-aged men risk everything for transient affairs with younger women; why homosexuality persists in the face of standard evolutionary logic; and what the human body reveals about the prehistoric origins of modern sexuality.
In the tradition of the best historical and scientific writing, Sex at Dawn unapologetically upends unwarranted assumptions and unfounded conclusions while offering a revolutionary understanding of why we live and love as we do.
Sex at Dawn: The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality
Christopher Ryan, Cacilda Jethá Since Darwin's day, we've been told that sexual monogamy comes naturally to our species. Mainstream science—as well as religious and cultural institutions—has maintained that men and women evolved in families in which a man's possessions and protection were exchanged for a woman's fertility and fidelity. But this narrative is collapsing. Fewer and fewer couples are getting married, and divorce rates keep climbing as adultery and flagging libido drag down even seemingly solid marriages.
How can reality be reconciled with the accepted narrative? It can't be, according to renegade thinkers Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jethá. While debunking almost everything we "know" about sex, they offer a bold alternative explanation in this provocative and brilliant book.
Ryan and Jethá's central contention is that human beings evolved in egalitarian groups that shared food, child care, and, often, sexual partners. Weaving together convergent, frequently overlooked evidence from anthropology, archaeology, primatology, anatomy, and psychosexuality, the authors show how far from human nature monogamy really is. Human beings everywhere and in every era have confronted the same familiar, intimate situations in surprisingly different ways. The authors expose the ancient roots of human sexuality while pointing toward a more optimistic future illuminated by our innate capacities for love, cooperation, and generosity.
With intelligence, humor, and wonder, Ryan and Jethá show how our promiscuous past haunts our struggles over monogamy, sexual orientation, and family dynamics. They explore why long-term fidelity can be so difficult for so many; why sexual passion tends to fade even as love deepens; why many middle-aged men risk everything for transient affairs with younger women; why homosexuality persists in the face of standard evolutionary logic; and what the human body reveals about the prehistoric origins of modern sexuality.
In the tradition of the best historical and scientific writing, Sex at Dawn unapologetically upends unwarranted assumptions and unfounded conclusions while offering a revolutionary understanding of why we live and love as we do.
The Moral Animal: Why We Are, the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
Robert Wright Are men literally born to cheat? Does monogamy actually serve women's interests? These are among the questions that have made The Moral Animal one of the most provocative science books in recent years. Wright unveils the genetic strategies behind everything from our sexual preferences to our office politics—as well as their implications for our moral codes and public policies. Illustrations.