SEXUAL PRACTICES

ISBN-10: 0-85533-4371
Writer: Edgar Gregersen
Title: Sexual Practices
Subtitle: The Story of Human Sexuality
Language: English
Place of Publication: London
Publisher: Mitchell Beazley
Year of Publication: 1984
Format: 180x262mm
Pages: 320; Bibliography, 308: Index, 313
Illustrations: 320 black and white pictures and sketches
Binding: Boards in duotone dust jacket
Original Price: N/A
Weight: 948gr.
Entry No.: 2012020
Entry Date: 23^rd May 2012

BOOK DESCRIPTION

In religion, morality, social customs and artistic themes, sex is and always has been an immensely powerful factor. In fact, sex pervades evry culture in the world. Yet a detailed cross-cultural study of how different societies of human beings (including those of the West) act, think and behave sexually, has never yet been seriously attempted.

Sexual Practices is the first book to bring together, in a masterpiece of comparison and synthesis, the sexual themes and variations of hundreds of societies, including our own. It defines our knowledge of sexual practices, explains how we came to possess that knowledge. It reveals and challenges commonly held misconceptions, frequently based on the respected but subjective interpretations of western anthropologists.

Wittily and fluently written, it combines immense anthropological scholarship with challenging insights and speculations about a central human concern hedged around with fantasies, tabus, inhibitions – not least among Westerners with their Judaeo-Christian heritage of sexual repression. It covers a vast cross-cultural range of human sexual practices and customs, illustrated with images from all over the world, many rare and previously unpublished.

Divided into thematic and geographic sections, Sexual Practices is filled with the most extraordinary facts, from the indication of earliest man’s favoured sexual position (frontal – as deduced from a footprint nearly four million years old) to the bizarre kangaroo-penis envy of contemporary Australian societies. It traces the history of sex from its origins as a biological adaptation to the current sexual revolution and the emergence of the test-tube baby. It examines erotic and sexual art and architecture in high cultures, and folk beliefs and customs in primitive societies. Fully illustrated with more than 300 photographs, diagrams and maps, this is a book that enlarges our awareness of the human condition.

BIG THINK: BRAINGASM: HOW PORN "SHUTS DOWN" WOMEN'S BRAINS

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TO THE PURE...

Writers: Morris L. Ernst and William Seagle
Title: To the Pure…
Subtitle: A Study of Obscenity and Censor
Language: English
Place of Publication: New York
Publisher: The Viking Press
Year of Publication: MCMXXVIII
Format: 138x210mm
Pages: xiv+336; Bibliography, 311; Index, 325
Binding: Cloth in faded spine without dust jacket
Original Price: N/A
Weight: 575gr.
Entry No.: 2012017
Entry Date: 11^th May 2012

THE FEMALE BODY

ISBN-13: 978-0-472-06477-9
Editor: Laurence Goldstein
Title: The Female Body
Subtitle: Figures, Styles, Speculations
Language: English
Place of Publication: Ann Arbor, MI
Publisher: The University of Michigan Press
Year of Publication: 1991
Format: 153x230mm (trimmed)
Illustrations: 81colour and black and white plates, pictures and sketches
Pages: x+317
Binding: Paperback in colour wrappers
Original Price: N/A
Weight: 580gr.
Entry No.: 2012016
Entry Date: 11^th May 2012

BOOK DESCRIPTION

The female body has been a topic much discussed during the past two decades as scholars have attempted to place the subject in historical and theoretical contexts. Acknowledging the topic’s emergence as a central one in contemporary debates, Laurence Goldstein, editor of the acclaimed Michigan Quarterly Review, invited a group of anthropologists, historians, literary scholars, psychologists, philosophers, sociologists, and art historians, as well as poets, artists, and fiction writers, to provide their reflections.

The range of vantage points is impressive. Carol Gilligan defines how the body, as “a repository of experience and desire” is a source of resistance to complex family and social demands. Ruth Behar, speaking of hysterectomy and abortion, asks whether the female body is nothing more than the pliant subject of “the master narrative of medical science.”

In other writings, Susan Bordo studies the plasticity of the female body in the technological age: Andrea Dworkin portrays the terror of a woman on urban streets; Anne Herrmann considers cross-dressing in society and film. Still other writers examine the presence of the female body in fiction, poetry, and ballroom dance, among other venues. The book also features an essay by art historian Darcy Grimaldo Grigsby, accompanied by a rich portfolio of women artists’ representations of female bodies.

The Female Body synthesizes and extends the previous literature, increasing the possibilities for understanding and experience. General readers and specialists alike will find abundant new information and insights, and much to argue with as well as to agree with, in this engrossing book.

THE BUTCHER, THE BAKER, THE CANDLESTICK MAKER

ISBN-13: 978-0-7535-1101-5
Writer: Suzanne Portnoy
Title: The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker
Subtitle: An Erotic Memoir
Language: English
Place of Publication: London
Publisher: Virgin Books
Year of Publication: 2006
Format: 127x194mm (trimmed)
Pages: 218
Cover Photo: Getty
Binding: Paperback in duotone wrappers
Original Price: GBP7.99 / USD12.95 / CAD17.95
Weight: 233gr.
Entry No.: 2012014
Entry Date: 8^th May 2012

BOOK DESCRIPTION

After a love affair with a man three thousand miles away, met online, Suzanne Portnoy – mother of two and a top executive in the entertainment industry – begins her sexual reawakening. Embarking on a sensational and prolific series of liaisons, Suzanne beds a top London chef, who cooks her a five-star meal on the day her husband moves out. An affair with a famous men’s magazine editor quickly ensues, followed by a top cameraman who takes pictures of Suzanne naked. But this is just the beginning. Insatiable, Suzanne dives into the swinging scene and works her way through an entire spectrum of sexual experience, including exhibitionism, group sex, fetish clubs, and a predilection for picking up men during her lunch hour.

Suzanne’s journey of self-discovery is anything but typical; her attitude towards sex and relationships even more unusual. The Butcher, The Baker, The Candlestick Maker is a story that is shocking and heartwarming in equal measure. Freed from the restraints of marriage and monogamy, Suzanne takes pleasure without commitment and tells her story without a trace of shame. She’s not looking for Prince Charming anymore, but fun. And she finds it.

LESLIE