Discount Shopping Online :: Books Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex : :

Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
by: Mary Roach

List Price: $24.95

Amazon.com's Price: $16.47

You Save: $8.48 (34%)
Prices subject to change.

Used Price: $10.97
Collectible Price: $59.95
Third Party New Price: $11.00

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: 1549
Studio: W. W. Norton

Related Items:

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: out of 5 stars

Rating:

- won't improve your sex life...or perhaps it will
You think you know that much about sex is weird and you've heard it all before until you read this book. You learn some, the footnotes, too, are educational. The author is ever-present; this is written much from a personal perspective. That's, of course, intentional and refreshing up to a point. One more flaw: she talks about many gadgets, diagrams or pictures would've been helpful.

Rating:

- Rats in pants?
Bonk the Curious Coupling of Science and Sex is a thorough history of the study of sexual behaviors and activity. Mary Roach, who previously written about cadavers and scientific studies of a possible afterlife, tackles the subject without a blush. She even managed to talk her husband into participating in study in which couples are imaged as they have intercourse. Bonk embraces the practical such as sex studies for spinal cord injury patients allowing them to remain sexual(many who get little or no information from their physicians) as well as the absurd, the study of polyester's effect on sexual activity (using rats wearing polyester pants). Throughout it all, Roach treats her subject with aplomb.

Rating:

- Lots of ick, but where's the fun?
A book by Mary Roach on sex, of all topics, ought to be wince-inducing and hilarious. The winces are there all right, with tales of penile surgery, farmers stimulating their animals for better yields, and various devices to measure and explore human sexuality. But whether from embarrassment or fatigue, the laughs just aren't there. Maybe it's the sheer ick factor of disinterested scientists playing mad doctor on unsuspecting indigent patients, or the utter weirdness of the Kinsey group "experimenting" on themselves and holding ejaculation contests. Or of the scary futuristic glare of the "Dr. Evil" of sex research -- William Masters (of Masters and Johnson fame). Perhaps it's just the groan factor of page after page of doctors probing, palpating, peering at and pontificating on the most sensitive areas of the body. Whatever it is, the book has nothing of the wacky morbid enjoyment of "Stiff," Roach's first book. ... Read More

Rating:

- Thoroughly entertaining and educational
Hands down this is one of the best books I have read in some time. I found myself laughing out loud with almost every page while staying riveted to the fascinating account of the study of sex throughout the last few hundred years.

Discount Shopping Online Books and Publications

Books : Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
Books and Publications Average Rating:

Search the web for info about Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Discount Shopping Online Books and Publications

Books : Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and SexBooks and Publications Average Rating:

Search the web for info about Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex

Books : Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex
Books and Publications Average Rating: