Human Sexuality and the Family Book

Clear, concise writing... which is what we all love about the "Very Short Introduction" series. It also pointed me in some useful directions, especially about eugenics and the left.

However.

Although I found the section on sexual practices in Ancient Greece (and it gets a little conflated with Rome) interesting, as a scholar of Japan, I have a eye-roll reflex to the instant link between a very specific ancient world and the very general concept of "antiquity." The link can (and ought to be) argued, but it should not be assumed. The section "Sex in the Ancient World" leads one to believe that the "Ancient World" was only Ancient Greece. Sigh. And then there is an image (ignored by the text) on page 71 of "Japanese sex toys, 1830," embedded in the section on Second Wave feminist sex wars. Even a brief mention of other antiquities (and the issue of modernity / Westernization / sexology in non-Western contexts) would have made this much much more comprehensive.