Sex by Numbers

Whatever society we live in, and however open-minded we like to think we are, when it comes to our sex lives we all like to keep a few secrets. But this makes the jobs of sexologists - professionals who study sexual behaviour - pretty difficult. Luckily, David Spiegelhalter, Professor of Risk at Cambridge University, is here to unravel the web of exaggerations, misdirections and downright lies that surround sex in modern society. Drawing on the NATSAL survey, the widest survey of sexual behaviour since the Kinsey Report, he answers crucial questions such as what are we all doing? How often? And how has it changed? Accompanying a major Wellcome exhibition on the same subject, Sex by Numbers is an informed and entertaining look at the most enduring of human obsessions, from one-night stands to transexuality.

Audience
adult
Length
medium · 368 pages

Click a tag to see books like this one that share it. Point at it (on a phone, tap it) for less of it instead.

Read it? Sign in to help tag it.

Liked Sex by Numbers? Here’s where I’d start.

These suit anyone who liked Sex by Numbers. Sign in and mark a few books for picks shaped around your own taste.

  1. Sexual landscapes Shares sex customs, homosexuality, sexual behavior
  2. Premodern Sexualities Shares sex customs, homosexuality, sexual behavior
  3. The erotic imagination Shares sex customs, homosexuality, sexual behavior
  4. Sex and Desire in Muslim Cultures Shares sex customs, sexual behavior, sex

“If you want more of the same, start with these.”

  1. Technologies of the Self: A Seminar with Michel Foucault
  2. Sanctity and male desire
  3. Pulling Taffy
  4. Queer Space

“If it was the sex customs that hooked you, try one of these.”

  1. Victorian sexual dissidence
  2. Curious History of Sex
  3. Sexual knowledge, sexual science
  4. Twentieth-Century Sexuality

“These start from a similar idea, even if they go somewhere else with it.”

  1. Sex surveyed, 1949-1994
  2. OUTSPOKEN WOMEN: AN ANTHOLOGY OF WOMEN'S WRITING ON SEX, 1870-1969; ED. BY LESLEY A. HALL
  3. Best Sex Writing 2013: The State of Today's Sexual Culture
  4. Who's Been Sleeping in Your Head?: The Secret World of Sexual Fantasy