"It wasn't until the past half century that lab-based science embraced the pursuit of better, more satisfying sex." Yet even today, there's the unspoken assumption that "people study sex because they are perverts," says Roach. All are premised on the conviction that human sexuality is as worthy of scientific study as "sleep or digestion or exfoliation".
In her quest for the latest insights, Roach visits sex research labs in London, Cairo, and Taiwan as well as the US. While she's sympathetic to scientists' desire to demystify sex and to help people with sexual problems, her sense of the ridiculous supplies regular doses of comic relief. Keenly attuned to what she calls the "cringe factor", she manages to describe the nitty-gritty of genitalia in action without making you wish she hadn't. 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.Californian reporter Mary Roach puts her quick wit to good service in this entertaining romp through sex research, past and present. 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.
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 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 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.
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