Provocative, illuminating, and consistently entertaining.
The unexpected and underappreciated history of sex toys.
Years before sex expert Lieberman earned her doctorate in “Sex Toy History,” she invested in her first vibrator, and it became “love at first buzz.” She went on to participate in adult novelty parties while living in Texas, where the sale or promotion of sexual stimulators was considered legally obscene (things have changed since). The historically regressive nature of the availability and use of sex toys forms the thrust of the book, and the author’s vast knowledge of sex, eroticism, and the art of self-pleasure is on vibrant display. Lieberman describes ancient “phallic batons” in use as far back as 40,000 B.C.E. Though the information is readily available, she notes, there remains no definitive answers on the true origins and usages of sex toys, primarily because their history is shrouded in “male fear,” patriarchal regulation of women’s bodies, and shame. While Japanese societies celebrate the sex toy, the author encountered difficulty in tracing the tabooed subject matter within American culture until, tucked away in the archives of museums, libraries, and vintage catalogs, she discovered dilators, ticklers, and vibrators and their assorted histories as sexual apparatuses disguised as medical devices. Lieberman introduces us to a colorful cast of creators and purveyors who have played a role in destigmatizing masturbation and revolutionizing the sex industry. Among others, these include an enterprising paraplegic who embarked on a handcrafted dildo manufacturing business, which helped usher innovative variations on sex toys into the mainstream consumer market. Lieberman also profiles the two creative entrepreneurs behind the Pleasure Chest adult novelty chain and American artists and sex educators Betty Dodson and Joani Blank, and she updates readers on more contemporary advancements within the sex toy arena. On a deeper level, through its probing exploration, the text also becomes a sharp commentary on contemporary society’s ever changing sexual landscape and how sex is perceived, judged, accepted, and enjoyed with more variations than ever before.
Provocative, illuminating, and consistently entertaining.Pub Date: Nov. 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-68177-543-2
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Pegasus
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2017
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorker staff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
