Bonk is a not a strictly scientific book — Mary Roach doesn't explore the chronology of the scientific study of sex or what it reflects about the cultures that produce it. She barely mentions gender politics, fluid sexuality, or even Kinsey. And she never addresses her own views on The Subject (except to reveal, tauntingly, that she and her husband had sex inside an MRI machine as part of her research). In fact, she assumes that you, like most, really read books on those themes in order to uncover the buried gold nuggets she's conveniently collected in her book — information about, say, the first "sex machines," the bizarre rectal electroinseminator developed for pigs, or the induction of erections in cadavers — and the endless puns and punchlines that can be teased from them.

Roach isn't interested in sex so much as in the people who study it and the circumstances of its study. To that effect, she's delivered a book that exposes the nervous blush and careful stuttered euphemisms of a science that's just not as easily divorced from discomfort as the rest of biology is. Despite the typical awkwardness, her presence as a narrative voice — a dry, quirky, Californian voice that never misses a beat — is surprisingly emboldening. Rather than leaving you confused or unsettled, she lets you get caught up in her confidence. She goes places you're embarrassed to be curious about, including morgues, zoos, and New Age operation rooms, without blinking an eye, and you find yourself, predictably, staring along with her. Roach reveals her world with such absurdist enthusiasm that you forget to be uncomfortable and let yourself be fascinated with the history of what is by far the most risible human instinct.

-Veronica Mittnacht