Books on the Science of Sex

Over the last decade, a growing number of both fiction and non-fiction books have attempted portray and explain sex scientifically. Jeffrey Eugenides’ Pulitzer Prize-winning novel Middlesex (2003), for instance, chronicles the sexual development of a hermaphrodite with hard-earned clinical accuracy. Steven Angelides’s A History of Bisexuality (2001) provides an historical background to the ongoing, and often candid, debate over whether bisexuality is a choice. And Mary Roach’s Bonk (2008) reviews the literature on such questions as why Viagra doesn’t work for women. Acknowledging this new inclination for sexing up science while demystifying sex, we asked five experts to spotlight the best recent books on the science of sex.

Geoffrey Miller, professor evolutionary psychology at the University of New Mexico and author of the forthcoming Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior (Viking, May 2009).

The Evolution of Desire, 4th Ed. by David Buss (Basic Books, 2003) is an excellent introduction to the evolutionary psychology research, especially the origins of mate preferences: why men and women are attracted to certain traits and people. Survival of the Prettiest by Nancy Etcoff, on the science of beauty and physical attractiveness, offers a nice clear review of the research on sexual selection in relation to physical attractiveness, and the evolution of the human face and body. The Mating Mind: How Sexual Choice Shaped the Evolution of Human Nature (Anchor, 2001), by me, is still a pretty good review of sexual selection theory applied to humans, and focuses on the mental traits that are sexually attractive. Lastly, I should mention The Game (William Morrow, 2005) by Neil Strauss, which is on the pick-up artist scene, and the practicalities of seduction and the psychology of contemporary sex. For some reason, pick-up artists have proven especially avid consumers of evolutionary psychology research, for better or worse.

Melissa Hines, professor of psychology in the Department of Social and Developmental Psychology at the University of Cambridge (UK), studies prenatal influences on gender development. She is the author of Brain Gender (Oxford University Press, 2005).

Eleanor Maccoby and Carol Jacklin’s classic, The Psychology of Sex Differences, (Stanford University Press, 1974) is still a great introduction to understanding the breadth of factors that contribute to sex differences in human behavior, as well as the pitfalls that readers and researchers often forget when trying to understand these sex differences. Steve Ceci and Wendy Williams’s edited volume, Why Aren’t More Women in Science? (American Psychological Association Press, 2007) is a collection of confident, but surprisingly conflicting, answers to the question by researchers active in different aspects of the field. I loved Middlesex by Jeffrey Eugenides (Bloomsbury Publishing, 2003), a beautifully written novel about gender identity, indeed human identity more broadly, and unusual in providing almost perfectly accurate clinical information about disorders of sex development—an A+ on both literary and scientific grounds. Finally, for those confused about what is useful in the realm of evolutionary psychology, I recommend the fine volume, Sense and Nonsense, by Kevin Laland and Gillian Brown (Oxford University Press, 2002). It provides the tools for sorting the wheat from the chaff.

Sharon Moalem holds a Ph.D. in human physiology and neurogenetics, and is the author of How Sex Works (Harper, April 2009).

Chances are you heard of this book, but you’ve probably never read it. At least not cover to cover. Well, it’s time that you go out and get your very own copy of the Kama Sutra. It’s a cheap buy, and there’re a few translations to choose from. It’s a book with something for everyone. For men it describes how to practice copulation by using a pumpkin. And women will not feel left out either, with a lengthy discussion of what must be one of the earliest descriptions of “bend over boyfriend.” A true classic. You may also be surprised to hear that you need to thank the medical profession for the invention of the vibrator. According to Rachel Maines, the vibrator was invented to increase the efficiency and lend a “hand” to 19th century physicians treating “hysteria.” Maines’ book, The Technology of Orgasm: “Hysteria,” the Vibrator, and Women’s Sexual Satisfaction (John’s Hopskins University Press, 2001) is a provocative take on this most celebrated piece of technological comfort. A book not to be missed.

Gail Hawkes in currently a lecturer at the School of Behavioral, Cognitive and Social Sciences at the University of New England, and the author with R. Danielle Egan of the forthcoming Theorizing the Sexual Child in Modernity (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010).

Serious sexuality scholars cannot go far without consulting history. In this respect, Sexuality, 2nd Edition by Jeffrey Weeks (Taylor and Francis, 2003) remains the starting point for student and interested layperson alike. Weeks weaves the past into the present, engaging with new sexual identities, sexual rights, and globalization. He demonstrates that erotic rights remain conditional in an otherwise sex-saturated world. A Surgical Temptation: The Demonization of the Foreskin and the Rise of Circumcision in Britain by Robert Darby (University of Chicago Press, 2005) offers an example a largely unaddressed dimension of sexual history. Fascinating in its historical detail, this nineteenth century case study exemplifies the mix of the medical and the moral, and how ideas about ‘the sexual’ move a long way from the bedroom, both then and now. A History of Bisexuality by Steven Angelides (University of Chicago Press, 2001) addresses bisexuality, not as a fashion fad, a political cop-out or a joke, but historical background, giving readers a chance to decide if erotic ambidexterity is a radical sexual choice. The International Handbook of Sexuality Health and Rights edited by Peter Aggleton and Richard Parker (Routledge, forthcoming November 2009) belies its matter-of-fact title by its kaleidoscopic content. It comprises short essays on topics ranging from strip clubs to global sexual health from teenage fertility to histories of incest, which will entertain as well as inform both the professional and lay reader.

Maryanne Fisher, assistant professor of psychology at Saint Mary’s University in Nova Scotia, is co-author most recently of “The influence of relationship status, mate seeking and sex on intrasexual competition” in the Journal of Social Psychology (2008)

One of the most important books of my career was The Woman that Never Evolved (Harvard University Press, 1999) by Sarah Hardy, which provocatively reviews female primates’ behavior. This book and Anne Campbell’s A Mind of Her Own (Oxford University Press, 2002) inspired my doctoral research and the work I have performed for the past decade on women’s intra-sexual competition for mates. Currently, I am reading Evolution and the Social Mind edited by Forgas, Haselton and von Hippel (Psychology Press, 2007) in the hopes that it will bring me up to date on evolutionary social psychology. I am also engrossed in Richard Bribiescas’s Men: Evolutionary and Life History (Harvard University Press, 2008). I am trying to better understand men’s mating strategies.

Tim Dean is professor of English at the University at Buffalo. His book Unlimited Intimacy: Reflections on the Subculture of Barebacking (University Of Chicago Press) will be published in June.

Intimacies (University of Chicago Press, 2008) offers a fascinating dialogue between philosopher Leo Bersani and psychoanalyst Adam Phillips about the possibilities of less familiar kinds of relationships, sexual and otherwise. Times Square Red, Times Square Blue, by Samuel R. Delany (New York University Press, 1999) is a marvelous analysis of Manhattan’s now destroyed porn theaters and the erotic communities formed among their patrons. The Trouble with Normal: Sex, Politics, and the Ethics of Queer Life, by Michael Warner (Free Press, 1999), describes changes in New York’s public sexual culture in the context of a progressive critique of same-sex marriage, arguing that marriage is a discriminatory institution not just because lesbians and gays still do not have full access to it, but because marriage legitimates one kind of sexual relationship at the expense of others. The Sexual Life of Catherine M. (Grove Press, 2002) provides an astonishingly frank autobiographical account of one contemporary Frenchwoman’s erotic adventures. In their different ways, these four books succeed in the difficult task of finding a forthright yet non-pornographic language for the vagaries of sexual experience. ♦