Readings in human sexuality Book

My one-star rating is based upon the Kindle edition. This book is an EXHAUSTIVE (and exhausting) 800+ page traverse through sexual humor. And it is only Volume 1 of 2! Fortunately, volume 2 is not available for Kindle.

But first, let me point out some positive aspects of the book. The author knows his material, and there are numerous cites to authorities from antiquity, Rabalais, Italian works from the Renaissance, to dirty jokes heard on "transcontinental train" rides from the 1940s. If you like Freud, you will get a pretty heavy dose of it. I am unable to say whether his understanding of Freud is mainstream.

But the negatives overwhelm. The author is self-taught and to be honest is a crackpot. He creates an incredibly complex schema (which he explains for over 100 pages) and constantly cites to his various (out of print) books and pamphlets. He rails against the "hippy." You hear a lot about his personal life, his opinions on authors such as Hemingway, and again the hippies. This book desperately needed a firm editor when it was first published. I suspect the book could have been cut in half with good editing. The Freud in some chapters overwhelms the jokes themselves. Jokes are often repeated.

On top of that, the Kindle publisher should be ashamed. Minor typos are abundant. It is clear that nobody at the publisher wanted to proofread the book and relied solely on OCR scanning. For example, "die" is printed in place of "the" throughout.

In sum, if you are interested in the subject matter, and happen to see a reasonably priced used copy for sale, by all means buy it and browse the book when you are bored. If you can find a used copy of volume 2, get that because it apparently contains a Bibliography of the entire work which would be very valuable. I would not recommend plowing through the book from front to back.