The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (and How to Do Them) (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

NPR host Sagal (Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me) offers a hilarious, harmlessly prurient look at the banality of regular people's strange and wicked pleasures. In the wake of the late-1990s obsession with other people's fun, notes Sagal, the hoi polloi have pursued their own indulgences, such as sex joints, swinging couples' clubs, gambling and pornography. He describes the three necessary elements of vice that distinguish it from sin and give it that irresistible frisson: social disapprobation, actual pleasure and shame. A buttoned-up journalist and family man, Sagal visits the respective dens of inequity, interviewing the principals in the name of research while preserving his academic irony, e.g., during the shooting of a hardcore porn sequence for Spice TV, he remarks of the actors: I began to appreciate how very well Evan and Kelly did their work. Indeed, the dedicated hedonists, such as the regular joe habitués of San Francisco's Power Exchange or the normal-seeming couples who frequent the Swinger's Shack, face the same problems of meeting supplies, logistics, expense versus income, and time management as does any warehouse foreman. Sagal is a terrific, lively writer, and while some of his segments are repetitive and stretched, he is admirable in humanizing the participants. (Oct.)
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Product Description

Somewhere, somebody is having more fun than you are. Or so everyone believes. Peter Sagal, a mild-mannered, Harvard-educated NPR host—the man who put the second "L" in "vanilla"—decided to find out if it's true.

From strip clubs to gambling halls to swingers clubs to porn sets—and then back to the strip clubs, but only because he left his glasses there—Sagal explores exactly what the sinful folk do, how much they pay for the privilege, and exactly how they got those funny red marks. He hosts a dinner for three of the smartest porn stars in the world, asks the floor manager at the oldest casino in Vegas how to beat the house, and indulges in molecular cuisine at the finest restaurant in the country. Meet liars and rich people who don't think consumption is a disease, encounter the most spectacular view ever seen from a urinal, and say hello to Nina Hartley, the only porn star who can discuss Nietzsche while strangers smack her butt.

With a sharp wit, a remarkable eye for detail, and the carefree insouciance that can only come from not having any idea what he's getting into, Sagal proves to be the perfect guide to sinful behavior. What happens in Vegas—and in less glamorous places—is all laid out in these pages, a modern version of Dante's Inferno, except with more jokes.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: It Books (October 16, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0060843829
• ISBN-13: 978-0060843823
• Product Dimensions: 8.5 x 5.4 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (27 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #148,616 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars More about virture than vices, October 20, 2007

By	Michael P. Maslanka (dallas, texas United States) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

While this is nominally a book about vices, it is really a book about virtues, and it is an effective one: there are no lectures, no finger wagging a la Bill Bennett, no holier than thou passages. The chapter on lying savages those who bald face lie, taking apart Holocost deniers and Kerry defamers and both presidents Clinton and Bush. The one on consumption is a thoughtful review of evolutionary biology (we are wired to display the fruits of our wealth; it helps with a female finding a mate that will ensure the genes get passed on; who knew:waste is sexy) and how this wiring--- once useful --- now makes us do nutty stuff , like paying millions for celeb musicians to play at sweet sixteen parties. The chapter on swinging reminds us---as with many of the vices---that, as Shaw remarked, there are two great tragadies---one not to get your hearts desire , the other to get it. Sagal reminds us, in the end, not to get too worked up over what we think we don't have that others do, to be grateful for the small things, and to understand that a life without tempting vices is a life well worth living

18 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great vicarious romp that leaves you glad to be virtuous, October 16, 2007

By	Holden Caulfield "Holden Caulfield" (East Coast, USA) - See all my reviews

While the subtitle is a bit misleading (it really should be "Very Naughty Things (and why you shouldn't REALLY want to do them after all)", this book is enormously fun, especially - but not only - for those already familiar with Sagal's sarcastic wit and extraordinary verbal dexterity. He's sort of a perverse, Ivy League version of Milo leading us through the Phantom Tollbooth to the Lands Beyond Expectations. You couldn't ask for a better guide, especially since he lets you feel like it's really okay to be missing out on the swingers clubs, strip joints, casinos, etc.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars As fun as its title suggests, October 25, 2007

By	Debra Hamel (TwitterLit.com) - See all my reviews (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)

Peter Sagal is the whip-smart host of NPR's news quiz show Wait Wait...Don't Tell Me! Fans of the program will be delighted to learn that Sagal is also now the author of a deliciously titled (and even more deliciously subtitled) exploration of iniquity: The Book of Vice: Very Naughty Things (And How to Do Them). The book is as fun as its title suggests.

Sagal discusses a different vice in each of the book's seven chapters--though sex looms as the dominant theme of three of them--dropping keen observations while describing his research into the subject at hand. For his first chapter, for example, on swinging, Sagal and his wife Beth observed the goings-on at a weekly swinger's party. He describes the logistics of the operation--the uses to which the various rooms of the place were put--while trying to understand the nature of the Lifestyle: becoming emotionally attached to the people you have sex with is not the done thing, for example, yet people who are in it only for the sex are apparently frowned on as well. In the end Sagal finds that he is not cut out for swinging himself:

"We are told, via their occasional interviews in the press, that swingers or Lifestylers or whatever are no different from you and me...they meet up to socialize, talk, drink, and dance with their good friends, old and new. And then they have sex with them. Which makes me stop, and consider the various good friends my wife and I have, and then consider how it would be if one of our suburban dinner parties ended with us removing our clothes and performing sexual acts, and I have to put my head between my knees and take deep breaths."

Elsewhere in the book Sagal writes about strip clubs and pornography. For the latter chapter he visits the set of a live, call-in sex show. (The stars of the show perform whatever acts their caller prescribes while a roomful of camera operators and lighting guys and directors watch, rather bored, from behind a thick glass partition.) Rounding out the book are chapters on gambling, eating, conspicuous consumption, and lying.

Sagal is a charming and funny guide through these particular avenues of sin. Maybe if you've done the things he describes--the $500-a-pull slot machines and 24-course dinners (that leave you hungry for Jack-in-the-Box), lap-dancing and lying and live broadcast sex--you'll find the book humdrum. For the rest of us armchair sinners it's pure pleasure.

-- Debra Hamel