cover image Great Sex

Great Sex

Michael Castleman. Rodale Press, $24.95 (384pp) ISBN 978-1-57954-737-0

In this comprehensive sex manual, Castleman, a sex educator, counselor and journalist specializing in men's sexuality, leads readers through the pleasures and pitfalls of heterosexual copulation and its accoutrements. Illustrated with artful charcoal drawings and peppered with bon mots like""great sex is a combination of friction and fantasy,"" the book breezily covers a wide swath of the sexual arena, everything from the perennial libido crusher, male impotence, to questions of hygiene, like female douching. The author doesn't really reveal any new""secret principles."" The Q&A section, for example, covers the same topics that most on-air sex therapists have been discussing since the sixties: e.g.""During sex with my girlfriend/wife, I have fantasies of other women. Is that okay?"" and""Is it okay to masturbate as much as I do?"" Still, Castleman does arrange and clearly present a wealth of information--from descriptions of the sexual positions that are most likely to bring a woman to orgasm to a careful discussion of how couples can regain intimacy in the wake a sexual trauma, such as abuse, rape or stalking. Combined with the author's calm, practical tone, such breadth is likely to win him many readers. 25 b/w illustrations.