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.

Product Description: Why do testicles hang the way they do? Is there an adaptive function to the female orgasm? What does it feel like to want to kill yourself? Does "free will" really exist? And why is the penis shaped like that anyway? In Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That?, the research psychologist and award-winning columnist Jesse Bering features more than thirty of his most popular essays from Scientific American and Slate, as well as two new pieces, that take readers on a bold and captivating journey through some of the most taboo issues related to evolution and human behavior...read more

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.

The geneticist-author of The Seven Daughters of Eve offers a close-up study of the defining characteristic of men, and the Y chromosome in their DNA, and explains why this could be men's fatal flaw, drawing on the latest research in a variety of scientific fields to explore such issues as the potential for a male homosexual gene and the genetic causes of male aggression. (view table of contents)