Sex, the Illustrated History

Sex, the Illustrated History: Through Time, Religion, and Culture, Volume II, continues a daring exploration of human sexuality from the ancient to the modern world.  This volume explores the sexual beliefs and practices of the peoples of Asia, Australia, Africa, the South Pacific, and the indigenous Americas. Revealed are sexual practices and beliefs previously omitted or obscured from all historical telling. This work explores complex relationships between Eastern spirituality and sexuality. The author continues the exploration of religion’s control over sexuality and the projection of women as both goddess and chattel.
 
Sex, the Illustrated History traces sexual attitudes from the transcendent to the bizarre throughout the world’s cultures. These pages share graphic erotic artworks as well as explicit literary excerpts painstakingly culled from the hidden treasure troves of cultures throughout history. The often-explicit illustrations are linked by historical and anthropological content, inviting the reader to experience sexuality through varied and often-shocking cultural lenses. Each volume contains over 250 erotically themed images that have been gathered by the author in his travels and studies of world cultures. This is an encyclopedic tour of the sexuality of humankind!

Reviews

“A startling achievement! Nothing like this has ever been published. A prodigious and iconoclastic odyssey into human sexuality through ages and cultures. A new light is cast upon lesser-explored topics in the history of sexuality, bisexuality, the subjugation of women, and the exploitation of women and boys. Hundreds of images of sexual and erotic life in various cultures help to tell this impeccably documented tale of human sensuality. Challenging and confronting, this book is sure to disrupt cherished beliefs about religion and sex” (Dr. T. W. Vickers).

“Personally, I was enriched by this book and learned a vast amount of new sexual material. This book is both unsafe and pernicious if you share this most common superstition in our culture, the idea that words can be dangerous. I know John from the Berkeley days, and he worked with Timothy Leary and myself on the Exo-series of Human Evolution. I applaud his life’s work” (Robert Anton Wilson).