Malika Favre This week in The New York Times Book Review, Elaine Blair reviews Daniel Bergner’s “What Do Women Want?†Ms. Blair writes:
Squeezed into these 200 pages are interviews with psychologists, psychiatrists and primatologists who have been “puzzling out the ways of eros in womenâ€; a capsule history of ideas about female sexuality from biblical times to the present; the story of the so-far elusive hunt for a Viagra-type aphrodisiac for women; a discussion of the different types of female orgasm; and the personal accounts of a dozen or so ordinary women who talk about their sex lives and fantasies. The experiments and data Bergner writes about vary widely and don’t all point in the same direction, but he sets this tour of contemporary sex research against one particular shibboleth: the notion that women are naturally less libidinous than men, “hard-wired†to want babies and emotional connection but not necessarily sex itself.
On this week’s podcast, Mr. Bergner talks about the science of female desire; Philipp Meyer discusses his second novel, “The Sonâ€; Margalit Fox on her new book, “The Riddle of the Labyrinthâ€; and Gregory Cowles has best-seller news. Pamela Paul is the host.
