Sex Lives: A Sexual Self-Portrait of America

Baker ( What Men Really Think ) interviewed more than 100 men and women, most aged 30-45 (``the first American generation to openly explore and experiment with their sexuality'') about their sex lives. Starting with initiation, the book is divided into broad, often overlapping, subjects: adultery, marriage, sexual performance, pressure and dysfunction. Given that the interviewees were all people willing to talk to a stranger about their sex lives, it nonetheless appears that many Americans are less sexually liberated than popular culture would indicate. Although Baker claims that the interviewees' language is ``like brushing against a lover's body--explicit, glistening with sensuous detail,'' the repetitive accounts from anonymous and largely indistinguishable voices describing early gropings and voyeuristic glimpses of sexual acts tend to pall. (Jan.)