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.
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 A Glass of Wine, a Sex Toy, and Thee ( murphys6 )
Mary Roach's humorous and disarming exploration of sexual areas of sensitivity (literal and metaphorical) is an impressively researched book that will lead you through various stages of shock and awe, frequent sensations of the dawning of understanding, and moments of downright poignancy. It is a worthwhile read for anyone interested in history, sex, things that get society's (and research subject's) underwear repeatedly in a bundle, or the anatomy of parts privy.
I'm a family physician. In contrast to an earlier reviewer that claimed to be "in the health field", I found the book to be highly entertaining, and chock full of information that doctors and patients need to know, but don't. It was also full of information that fascinates, stimulates, and titillates. Roach's description of the pig inseminator's life recalled to me a patient of my own that listed his job as "turkey inseminator", a job that the skillful worker can accomplish at a rate of about 3 turkeys per minute.
The topics range from the fascinating description of the benefits and mechanics of the sex life of paraplegics/quadraplegics, to workers in sex toy factories carrying huge armloads of jiggling life-sized plastic penises across the factory floor, to a discussion about what research says about which types of couples are likely to have "great sex" as opposed to "good sex". Answer, in descending order of success rates and limited to long term relationships (which do have better sex): lesbian couples, gay male couples, and alas, the to be pitied heterosexual couples. Why is this so? Read the book.
The book is more likely to rock your bedsprings than your world, but it WILL change the way you look at all things sexual, and unless your funnybone has been surgically removed, you WILL laugh.
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 Didn't learn this in biology class! ( fjkmmkm )
Sex has always had its humorous aspects for me, and I'm very happy to learn that Mary Roach has the same feeling. This book really covers many facets of sex and sexuality, but it does it with as funny twist, which takes it out of the realm of the pornographic and puts it into perspective as a scientific study (even though some of the "science" is a bit suspect). The casual reader will probably learn a lot of things about sex that he or she didn't know, and that he or she could have lived a long and happy life without knowing. That being said however, I thoroughly enjoyed reading this treatise, and learning more than I really wanted about sex. Possibly 16 years of Catholic eduation has blunted my mind to some of this, but who knows? Read it and enjoy it for yourself!
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Bonk
Another Mary Roach classic: everthing you wanted to know about sex, but did not have a clue to ask!
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Prepare to laugh ( nairobips8 )
I had read "Stiff" and loved it. Not a lot of writers get me laughing out loud, Ms Roach does, consistently. She does find the absurd in human expectations and endeavors, but also enlightens. I did learn I am unable to find any humor in a reference to a six year old boy being killed ("beaned" as the author puts it) by an oxygen tank during an MRI, and wished she'd seriously assaulted the tiger penis and rhino horn use thinking of ancient Chinese medicine, since the practice continues today. But I recognize these as my issues so, like a certain soap, find the author's work 99.99% pure delight. If you seek pure research look toward academia, otherwise you will not be disappointed.
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 disappointing and a waste of time ( cat753 )
I rarely write reviews, but felt so utterly annoyed with this book that I had to share my experience with others in the hopes of saving someone else hours of wasted time.
I am in the medical field, so I did not expect to learn anything about the anatomy or physiology of sex. What I did hope to get out of reading this book was some entertainment, and the book failed to deliver on that.
The author seems to insert random anecdotes throughout each chapter. There's not much organization or structure to the book, just random topics thrown together. She seems to hit upon the same topics repeatedly (dildos, masturbation, artificial insemination of livestock etc etc).
I was very disappointed by the book. My friend strongly recommended Bonk and Stiff to me, and I was looking forward to reading both. Even though Stiff has better reviews on Amazon than Bonk does, I don't think I can put myself through another one of March Roach's books, in the small chance that Stiff is even half as bad as Bonk.
This is coming from someone in the medical field. If you have any medical background, the material in this book is pretty boring. The writing style is annoying at best, and not at all entertaining.
However, if you have no medical background, perhaps the information in the book might be interesting, shocking, amusing, or all of the above.
I regret the 10+ hours I wasted on this book. (hard to estimate since I read it over the span of a few months... it was just that painful to read). You might be wondering why I kept reading at all. I tend to never leave anything half finished, even if that "thing" is an awful book.
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