Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and SexThe best-selling author ofStiffturns 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 ofThe 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? InBonk, 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. |
Contents
Foreplay | 11 |
The Sausage the Porcupine and the Agreeable Mrs G Highlights from the Pioneers of Human Sexual Response | 21 |
Dating the PenisCamera Can a Woman Find Happiness with a Machine? | 47 |
The Princess and Her Pea The Woman Who Moved Her Clitoris and Other Ruminations on Intercourse Orgasms | 65 |
The Upsuck Chronicles Does Orgasm Boost Fertility and What Do Pigs Know About It? | 87 |
Whats Going On in There? The Diverting World of Coital Imaging | 111 |
The Taiwanese Fix and the Penile Pricking Ring Creative Approaches to Impotence | 131 |
The Testicle Pushers If Two Are Good Would Three Be Better? | 157 |
The PrescriptionStrength Vibrator Masturbating for Health | 205 |
The Immaculate Orgasm Who Needs Genitals? | 227 |
Mind over Vagina Women Are Complicated | 245 |
What Would Allah Say? The Strange Brave Career of Ahmed Shafik | 263 |
Monkey Do The Secret Sway of Hormones | 279 |
Persons Studied in Pairs The Lab That Uncovered Great Sex | 297 |
Acknowledgments | 305 |
307 | |
ReMember Me Transplants Implants and Other Penises of Last Resort | 177 |
The Ladys Boner Is the Clitoris a Tiny Penis? | 193 |
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