
Book Expo America, Day 2 Highlights: Sex Book Edition
The list of books I heard about today that tickled my fancy takes up, I kid you not, 10 pages in my little Penguin Books pocket notebook. In the interest of narrowing it down by something more fun than genre or publisher, I’ve selected the ones that hit a personal sweet spot: sex!
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Vagina: A New Biography by Naomi Wolf (Ecco, September 2012)
Ladies and gentlemen, 2012 is the year of books about ladyparts. You heard it here first. Florence Williams kicked things off with her fun and crazy-informative Breasts, and now we get this one, from an author whose earlier work changed my life.
When an unexpected medical crisis sends Naomi Wolf on a deeply personal journey to tease out the intersections between sex and creativity, she discovers, much to her own shock, an increasing body of evidence that suggests that the vagina is not merely flesh, but is an intrinsic component of the female brain and thus female consciousness itself. A brilliant and nuanced synthesis of physiology, history, and culture, Vagina: A New Biography explores the physical, political, and spiritual implications for women and for society as a whole of this startling scientific breakthrough.
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Sex and God at Yale: Porn, Political Correctness, and a Good Education Gone Bad by Nathan Harden (Thomas Dunne Books, September 2012)
So, Yale University has this Sex Week thing once a year (which, if you ask me, sounds interesting and awesome), and other schools have picked up on it. Wikipedia tells me the week “explores love, sex, intimacy and relationships by focusing on how sexuality is manifested in America, helping students to reconcile these issues in their own lives.” And the author of this book? He doesn’t like it! So he wrote a book about it.
In order to glimpse America’s future, one needs to look no further than its college campuses. Of those institutions, none holds more clout than Yale University. Yet the school has become a full-fledged moral battleground where:
- A porn star gives a topless S&M demonstration in a classroom
- A student had received approval for an art project she said included tissue from repeated self-induced miscarriages
- The infamous Sex Week is held every two years