Bonk: The Curious Coupling Of Sex And Science - Softcover

To hang out with dead people, you need a deadpan sense of humour, and Roach is insouciant to the point of laugh-aloud funny. You could die laughing. * * The Times on Mary Roach * * Witty and original...Packed with more arresting details elegantly and humorously expressed than one could hope for. * * Sunday Telegraph on Six Feet Over * * Spry, sharp-witted and charmingly self-deprecating...Delightful. * * Sunday Times on Six Feet Over * * Terrifically witty, hugely engaging study of the way we love . . . * * Telegraph * * Roach certainly gets full marks for unflinching commitment to the job in hand . . . Bonk contains everything you ever wanted to know about the science of sex but were too afraid to ask. -- PD Smith * * Saturday Guardian Review * * When Mary Roach is seized by a subject, there is no stopping her: she is full-on, hands-on, and her lab coat is unbuttoned. -- Ian Finlayson * * The Times * * A bold, tenacious and insatiable reporter, Roach . . . could make an earthworm evisceration riveting and a hemispherectomy seem downright jolly. * * Scotsman * * Bonkers, but brilliant. * * Easy Living * * Eye-opening . . . compelling stuff. -- Tom Boncza-Tomaszewski * * Independent on Sunday * * Roach puts her quick wit to good service in this entertaining romp through sex research . . . She has done her homework . . . Her unshockability is contagious, and ultimately reassuring. -- Gail Vines * * Independent * *

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, James Watson and Napoleon Bonaparte's great grand-niece Marie. The research has taken place behind the closed doors of laboratories, brothels, MRI centres, pig farms, sex toy R&D labs and Alfred Kinsey's attic. Mary Roach devoted the past two years to stepping behind those doors. The result is Bonk: everything you wanted to know but couldn't imagine that someone in a white lab coat had studied. Can a person think herself to orgasm? Can a dead man get an erection? Can Kegeling cure erectile dysfunction? Can Broadway musicals cause it? Is vaginal orgasm a myth? If you can transplant a face, then why not a penis? What happens if you surgically relocate your clitoris? Why doesn't Viagra help women-or, for that matter, pandas? Does orgasm boost fertility? Cure hiccups? Do the earlobes swell during sex? Few things are as fundamental to human happiness than satisfying sex. Yet the funding for research, always elusive, has dwindled sharply. Bonk is both an ode to a fascinating and vital pursuit and a reminder that there is still much to learn. Sexual arousal and orgasm are two of the most complex, delightful, utterly amazing scientific phenomena on earth. Sexology, as Roach approaches it, is right up there too.