Bonk (English)

Mary Roach approaches her book subjects with unbridled curiosity, a wry sense of humor, and seemingly endless gusto. Previously she has explored death (STIFF) and the paranormal (SPOOK), and with BONK she delves into the perverse and often baffling world of human sexuality, and the richly ridiculous work of scientists who have sought to understand the science of sex. Roach's love of bizarre facts is infectious, and readers will be pulled along by tales of arcane medieval practices, absurd sexual contraptions, and the proliferation of studies that blossomed in the wake of the Kinsey Reports (for example: a 1980s experiment that tested the orgasm rate differences between prostitutes and feminists; or the 1950s use of a dildo-camera to study vaginal response). Roach not only embraces such outlandish studies, but even take part in them herself; in one chapter she and her husband volunteer to have sex while a doctor uses an ultrasound wand to record her husband's genital behavior. BONK is designed to entertain, but it also calls to mind the great experimenters of the past (think Pythagoras or Darwin), who tilted mightily against the leviathan of human ignorance, and who pledged fealty only to their love of knowledge. minimize