Book Review, The Guide to Getting It On

Despite its ubiquity in popular media, sexuality remains a contentious subject to write about honestly. It’s also a subject so vast and interconnected with all aspects of human experience that a definitive treatment is simply not possible. Faced with these challenges, the authors of the great sex manuals of the past forty years have risen to the task and in so doing, they have each chosen to stake their claim, marking a territory and approach to a topic that is both intensely sought after and hotly contested.

Older manuals opted for a medical approach, writing about sex as if it’s a science and about us as if we are numbers waiting to be slotted into the appropriate survey demographic.

More contemporary sex manuals have taken up social and political concerns, tying our sexual enlightenment with social emancipation.

The Guide to Getting It On, which in 2007 celebrated its 11th year in print and sales of over 600,000 copies, stands apart from all previous sex manuals both in its approach and content. Neither medical nor political (though with generous references to both throughout) the Guide to Getting It On may be the great personal sex manual of our time, and it is inarguably the most comprehensive sex guide in print.

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