Customer Reviews:
Showing reviews 6-10 of 68
 interesting and oh my goodness funny May 5, 2008
The Queen of Noirs (Santa Clara, CA USA)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Well, the Queen is a scientist by training and therefore a student of finer points of the exchange of genetic matter. In addition, the Queen has been studying chromosomal exchange for many, many years now and has successfully created an F1 generation of her own. In the 1970s genetic exchange was a much more casual matter and the various and sundry methods of exchange were a matter of her intense interest. However, the Queen LEARNED A LOT from Ms Roach's excellent, ribald and informative book. Pigs. Who knew? In addition to being a worthy and descriptive text, the study of the scientific endeavors of Masters and Johnson and the ilk is fascinating in and of itself. You have to admire the intense curiosity of these folks and the ingenuity of their various "methods". I also found satisfying (if you will) the final chapter where the key to transformative genetic exchange encounters was revealed. I will not spoil it for you but suffice it to say that I found it to ring true. I recommend this book with some reservations as the prurient will not find Ms Roach's sense of humor palatable.
It's sex-ay (science) time! April 7, 2008
Kelly Garbato (Kearney, MO USA)
12 out of 20 found this review helpful
Kegels and paraclitoridiennes and Thrillhammers, oh my!
Popular science writer Mary Roach is no stranger to the business of taboo-busting; her previous works, STIFF: THE CURIOUS LIVES OF HUMAN CADAVERS and SPOOK: SCIENCE TACKLES THE AFTERLIFE are books one might hesitate to discuss in polite company. (The biology of "human soup" isn't exactly acceptable dinner conversation, now, is it?) Lucky for us, Mary Roach* is a curious and intrepid soul who's more than willing tread where many of us would rather not - and then pen a witty, sarcastically humorous account of her journey.
BONK: THE CURIOUS COUPLING OF SCIENCE AND SEX is Ms. Roach's latest foray into the dark nooks and crannies of the scientific community's attic. Starting with the 1800s, the author details the history of scientific inquiries into human and animal sexuality. In its infancy, sexual research was awkward and, at times, nonsensical; as understanding of human biology increased, the field of sexual science evolved. Nowhere is this more evident than in science's treatment of women and gender; whereas scientists once argued whether women could even have orgasms, they now quibble over the most efficient means of getting the ladyfolk there. Just as the development of sexual knowledge reflects the progression of science and the embrace of the scientific method, so too does it correspond to women's liberation and gender equality. Thus, a history of sex studies is a history of science and social movements.
All is not meta with Ms. Roach, however. In fact, her delight seems to be in the details. While her discussion does focus on some overarching topics and themes - including the history of research into and knowledge of sexuality; female and male anatomy and psychology, including the similarities and differences between the genders; the physiology of sex, and how one goes about documenting it; and technology's impact on sexuality - BONK is full of meandering tangents and interesting side notes. Though the asterisks are many, don't skip a one. While a few are a bit extraneous even for me, some of the juiciest tidbits are in the side notes.**
BONK is a popular science book that's suitable for both lay people and professionals alike. The science in BONK is presented in such a way that it's accessible and engaging, yet it isn't watered down, either. Ms. Roach has an engaging writing style and a biting sense of humor, making this a "science of sex" book quite unlike any other. At times sardonic, macabre and morbid, she just has a way of skewering sacred cows - she'll show you precisely how the hot dog is made before cajoling you into taking a bite.**** Like many gourmet dishes, Ms. Roach's brand of humor may not please every palate - but this doesn't make it any less of a delicacy.
While I enjoyed the book immensely, I do have to offer a caveat. If you're sensitive to images of animal suffering (more specifically, vivisection and factory farming), read BONK with caution. As with any "history of science" book, BONK contains scenes of gratuitous violence against animals. For example, one early study the author describes involved the decapitation of a female dog - while mating (!) - in order to study the mobility of the male's semen. It's pretty gruesome stuff, and while Ms. Roach is for the most part appropriately horrified, some of the more modern abuses are left unquestioned.
* Even the woman's name tickles my fancy. "Mary Roach." Roach clip, anyone?
** For example, I bet you didn't know that perforated postal stamps are a low-tech way to determine whether a man is medically (as opposed to psychologically) impotent. Just wrap a roll around the package in question, and ship it off for overnight delivery. If the stamps are torn upon morning pickup, said package is in working (physical) order.***
*** The USPS both knows of and endorses the practice, FYI.
**** Much in the same manner she cajoled her husband into bonking in an MRI machine in the name of science. Or so one might assume.*****
***** Pants off to you, Ed!
The View from the Sexual Research Frontier April 16, 2008
R. Hardy (Columbus, Mississippi USA)
8 out of 12 found this review helpful
"I think by now you know how science is", says a researcher to Mary Roach. "You think you know a lot until you start to ask some really basic questions, and you realize you know nothing." That's perhaps a koan-like exaggeration, but it is certainly true that good research answers questions only to turn up more questions. This might be even more true in the arena of sexual research, the topic of Roach's enormously entertaining and informative _Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex_ (Norton). Roach has before written books about scientific evaluation of the physical and spiritual afterlife of the dead, and if she could make such macabre topics engaging and funny, you can count on a lively treatment of how science investigates sex. Part of the reason this book is so interesting is, of course, that everyone is interested in sex, and there is a great tangle of complicated hormones, engorgements, and reflexes that operate to give us sexual joy and we cannot even feel many of them operating. Another reason is that we got a late start in the scientific evaluation of the subject. Kinsey and Masters & Johnson were pioneers in a sphere where few others had gone before, because of a taint of naughtiness. Another reason the book is so interesting is that you can read all the books on chemistry, physics, or cosmology you want, and you will never find experiments as funny as those of the Egyptian researcher who monitored the coital rates of rats who wore polyester pants. And that's just one example of the experiments here.
Roach loves her subject, which she says is "as good as science gets" because it involves researchers who display "a mildly outrageous, terrifically courageous, seemingly efficacious display of creative problem-solving, fueled by a bullheaded dedication to amassing facts and dispelling myths in a long-neglected area of human physiology." She certainly gets into the spirit of the effort by recruiting her good-sport husband to be the first couple scanned in coition by 3D sonography."For the still images, we must hold still for several seconds, like Victorians posing for a tintype, only not like Victorians posing for a tintype." Roach reports on most of the other research without participating in it, like a paper from five years ago called "The Human Penis as a Semen Displacement Device". Not only did our male evolutionary forebears want to deposit their own semen into vaginas, they wanted to scoop out any semen from predecessors, and it turns out the shape of the glans at the end of the penis is just right to do this. This experiment involved no humans except for the experimenters. They used artificial semen (the recipe is given in the book), an artificial vagina from California Exotic Novelties, and three different artificial phalluses, one of them a control without a glans. The lifelike phalluses expelled 91% of the standing semen, while the cylindrical control expelled only 35%.
Roach has an appealing jocular prose, and her subjects in one chapter after another are, well, the sorts of scientists that would study such things, so they make for entertaining interviews. This does not keep her book from being packed with information, some of it at the cocktail-chatter level and some decidedly deeper. Here is the vaginal photoplethysmograph probe, and to balance that, the nocturnal penile tumescence monitor. Here is how Danish pig farmers stimulate sows so that artificial insemination has a better chance of success. Here is a report of the "inside-out" maneuver performed during surgery on the penis. Here are reflections about how doing sexual research was almost forbidden in the fifties, and then it became acceptable and fundable, but now in an era of "just say no" it has become difficult again. Here are explanations of how victims of paraplegia, who ought not to have sensation below the waist, can get orgasms. Here is evaluation of the famous upsuck theory of female orgasm, and an admission that studies comparing conception rates of women who have sex with orgasm and those who have sex without have simply not been done. Here are descriptions of sexual quackery from the past, including during the witch craze when witches were busy collecting men's penises by magic and putting them in the nests of birds who helpfully kept them alive with a diet of oats and corn. Here is the shorthand code used by the San Francisco Fire Department for sex toy emergencies. And here are some results from a forgotten study that issued from the lab of Masters & Johnson. The most fulfilling sex seems to have been that between committed gay and lesbian couples. Roach says, "Not because they were practicing special secret homosexual sex techniques, but because they `_took their time_.'" They moved slowly and lingered over each other's pleasure. They teased. They talked. Well, perhaps Roach examined research with more revolutionary lessons, but nonetheless, it might be practical to put this one into action.
Check out Bonk's Footnotes May 17, 2008
Darwin Stephenson (San Francisco, CA USA)
0 out of 2 found this review helpful
Watch Video Here: http://www.amazon.com/review/RO7REQ6YQX9SH We recently had Mary Roach on our radio show and she was a lot of fun. The entire interview was an hour long but there were some short hilarious conversations that I'm sharing here as they demonstrate what a wonderful and funny book this is.
Informative and Entertaining June 22, 2008
Jens B. Fiederer (Rochester, NY)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
I'm afraid I might have been a bit irritating to be around while I was reading this book - there was so much I wanted to share, and this book really isn't for EVERYONE.
Some people, for example, didn't really want to see the poster from the Danish government intended to help train farmers in making sure their pigs have climaxes during artificial insemination (which improves fertility)....
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