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

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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

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

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.

It's taken a while for someone to come out with a worthy counterpoint for William Bennett's Book of Virtues, but Peter Sagal makes the wait worthwhile (or should I say the Wait, Wait.. ?).

My contrived attempt at humor aside, The Book of Vice is a far more enjoyable read than most attempts to explain and rationalize or criticize the various vices of our times. Never straying from the intelligence that is a hallmark of his "Wait, Wait... Don't Tell Me" show on NPR, Sagal manages to package information about what some might regard as "the dark side" of human nature into a bemusing recounting of his research into the things that drive the cash to and from the likes of Bill Bennett, anonymous swingers, conspicuous consumers, and other gluttonous souls with far too much money and time. Along the way he makes a number of observations (substantiated or not) regarding trendsetters with roots in the Midwest (don't laugh, get us past the Rockies or the Appalachians and we just might surprise you) and other cultural influences. He also (either knowingly or not) provides ample evidence that he is married to a wonderful saint of a woman, Beth, who accompanies him on his research.

For those of you with more prurient interests, you're going to be disappointed. Yes, they attend a party at the Swingers's Shack. No, they don't indulge in anything more than conversation and innocent observance of the uh... mingling. In the area of gastronomical vice the Peter/Beth duo become a little more participatory, and I would have loved to be seated at the next table as Peter interviewed three female porn stars while Beth chatted enthusiastically with each of them about non-biz type topics. But it's all interesting, and it might surprise some readers to discover that the more you know about some vices like polyamorous sex, gambling, conspicuous consumption and pornography, the less likely you might be inclined to indulge in them (okay... some of them).

Some of the erstwhile revelations aren't all that revelatory actually; casino gambling is stacked in favor of the casinos, strippers really are interested more in the money than their customers and being rich doesn't always mean that you know the best ways to spend money.

But through Sagal you'll meet some very interesting (and yes, nice) people. Some who've learned lessons and evolved away from (or deeper into their vices), and others that simply manage to put things into a perspective that makes sense at least for themselves. With that in mind, I'd like to offer a special nod to Ms. Nina Hartley. Thanks to Peter Sagal, I can now appreciate you for your mind as well as your appearance!

Peter Sagal is, of course, a very smart and witty talker and he writes as well as he speaks. The book begins rather well - funny and clever - but then degenerates into what appears to be a compilation of past projects that were sort of mushed together. I'm not sorry I read it, but he could have done so much better.

Over the years I've dipped my toe in some of the vices Peter explores in his book and came away with the same vague emptiness that he describes. I thought it was just that I didn't "get it". Experiences that I thought would be fun and naughty were, well, pretty dull. Peter does a great job of describing what he sees and how he feels about it without getting preachy. He's funny and clever throughout and I thoroughly enjoyed this read and his conclusion that no matter what you're into, he perceives that most people are a bit disappointed to find it wasn't as fun as they thought and have a sense of always wondering if there's isn't something they are missing out on just over the horizon. If you were looking for precise "how to" books, this isn't the one, and never intended to be.

If you only know Peter Sagal from his radio show "Wait, Wait ... Don't Tell Me!", you may be slightly surprised at this book. It contains much of the humor he brings to the show, although of course not the ad libs, but beneath the light-hearted facade is an exploration of behavior patterns our society views as vices and portraits of people involved in them. If you don't know Sagal at all, you may be disapointed in the book, as it is NOT a dry, scholarly study.

Three of the seven topics involve sex, which perhaps reflects current American pre-occupations reasonably well. However, he omits our fascinations with lethal weapons and with violence generally, which also figure considerably in our entertainment (espeically television, movies, and video games). The manifestations of his selected vices tend towards the middle and upper classes.

The book is well written, and much of it is a first-person account of Peter's (and, often, his wife's) field work in the various subjects. Professional sociologists will be put off by the light tone, but may find some useful anecdotes nevertheless. The rest of us can derive some voyeuristic pleasure from seeing how the other half lives.

Entertaining read - I only wish Sagal wasn't such a prude. I'd like to read more of an insider's view, rather than that of an outsider looking in.

The vice beat is of perennial interest to writers and reporters, precisely because it's of such massive interest to readers. As Sagal writes near the end of this book, "God knows there are people who are having more fun than you, who are having more and better and frequent and more gymnastic sex than you are, who are enjoying adrenaline thrills and indulgences you can't even imagine" -- and the point of books and articles and TV shows like this are to poke around and see who those people are and what they're getting up to.

The Book of Vice is yet another tour of the world of sin, as usual written in a tone that suggests that the writer himself has no previous connection or understanding of any of this stuff -- perish the thought, he's an upstanding citizen, a quiet square type content to lick his stamp hinges or do something equally innocuous with his spare time -- but that he will penetrate this world and struggle through to its core in order to bring back salacious stories and anecdotes for his readers, who are innocent and normal, Just Like Him. This always feels like protesting too much -- Sagal wrote a whole book about sin, after all, and spent a good portion of the past decade researching and reporting and writing on the activities in this book, which shows he clearly has a certain interest in the subject -- but Sagal does come across as the required Normal Guy...though that does mean that the Normal Guys all deeply want to know what the non-normal are up to.

That's true, of course -- we do want to know what those people are up to in the other room, since we do have the lurking suspicion that everyone, or at least a lot of someones, are having massively more fun than we are -- and Sagal is polite enough not to rub our faces in it. But we are reading The Book of Vice because we want to know about swingers and porn and strip clubs and gambling and, perhaps, we'll pretend we're mostly interested in the non-salacious chapters in this book (on conspicuous consumption, lying, and the molecular gastronomy of the restaurant Alinea), but doing so would fool no one.

Sagal has that self-deprecating, I'm-just-a-mensch voice that goes best with this material, and The Book of Vice doesn't too obviously betray its origins as a series of magazine articles. (Books like this nearly always are assembled out of magazine articles, possibly because magazine editors are just as eager about sin as book editors are.) I'm afraid that The Book of Vice doesn't live up to its subtitle -- "Very Naughty Things (and How to Do Them)" -- since it assumes that the reader is, like Sagal, doomed to forever be outside the circle of people who do these things. It's a sobering thought, but, in this world, there are those who do and those who read about.

The individual chapters are each pleasant, short explorations of one particular kind of vice -- or, to be more precise, of one place or person that is an exemplar of that kind of vice. (Sadly, Sagal didn't cover the canonical seven sins, particularly since he comes back to Lust several times.) They're journalistic rather than expansive -- Sagal is looking at these people, in this place, and explaining what they're doing. (And, yes, then drawing the usual journalist's giant conclusions about everyone in the whole wide world.)

All The Book of Vice can really do is confirm your suspicion that there are people out there having more fun than you are -- but it does so entertainingly, and Sagal is a fine guide to the worlds of sin and depravity, particularly since he makes no claim to be part of that world. This is a frivolous book, but that only makes it more sinful itself -- and therefore better.

The title of this book certainly draws you in. It's always interesting to read about the seamier side of life, and wonder how people actually get INTO doing those things! But this book really isn't the answer to many questions. It looks at a very limited number of areas, and specific cultures within them---eating at a very high end restaurant, attending a swingers club for one night without participating, viewing the filming of a specific sort of adult movies, etc. It's certainly not an overview. However, what is written about still could be quite interesting, and sometimes is, but the writing is marred by a smarty-pants, looking-down-on-others attitude. For example, Sagal has NO understanding of the appeal of gambling and pretty much laughs his head off at those who would waste their money that way. I am sure most gamblers know the house wins in the end, but it still can be fun to watch the slot machine swirl knowing there's even a CHANCE of winning, if you only spend a limited amount---and Sagal doesn't get this at all. He subtly makes fun of almost everyone he meets, for example, repeatedly mentioning how a adult film star is staring into space during a meal. He has a few odd writing habits, like mentioning almost everyone's height as soon as they are introduced.

Overall, not a BAD book---but not really one that adds any knowledge or understanding to the world of vice!