| Bonk: Science in Pursuit of Better Sex |  | Author: Mary Roach
Creator: Sandra Burr
Publisher: Brilliance Audio Unabridged
Category: Book
This item is no longer available
Avg. Customer Rating:  59 reviews
Sales Rank: 7043645
Format: Audiobook, Unabridged
Media: Audio Cassette
Number Of Items: 7
ISBN: 1423316665
EAN: 9781423316664
ASIN: 1423316665
Publication Date: April 7, 2008
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Product Description
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.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 54 more reviews...
Interesting, humorous, and well-written August 30, 2008
Ms. Roach provides an entertaining look at the science of sex. It appears to be quite complete and up-to-date. As it is science though, portions of the book are not 110% engaging. All and all it was well worth a read.
 won't improve your sex life...or perhaps it will August 26, 2008
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.
Rats in pants? August 23, 2008
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.
Lots of ick, but where's the fun? August 20, 2008
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.
There's plenty to learn about human and animal sexuality. There's lots of info about the mistaken notion s that we humans have had over the years about "what goes where" and why. The ancients thought male and female contributed "seed" tom start human life -- an egalitarian concept not so far from the truth. But Leonardo, for all his enthusiasm for drawing accurate renditions of the human body from cadavers, turned away prudishly when it came to rendering the human reproductive system, preferring to use the erroneous work of others as his source. Then there's the reason, evidently molded by eons of rather messy competition between randy guys, that the male human organ is shaped the way it is.
The goodly amount of new and unusual info in "Bonk" needs to be made palatable by a certain amount of raucous, anarchic fun, but it's here that Roach is unable to deliver. A good read, even if you have to force your way through it.
 Thoroughly entertaining and educational August 13, 2008
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.
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