Buy new:
$9.86$9.86
$5.98
delivery:
Tuesday, Feb 6
Ships from: AceBook Sold by: AceBook
Buy used: $8.81
Other Sellers on Amazon
+ $5.06 shipping
90% positive over last 12 months
Download the free Kindle app and start reading Kindle books instantly on your smartphone, tablet, or computer - no Kindle device required.
Read instantly on your browser with Kindle for Web.
Using your mobile phone camera - scan the code below and download the Kindle app.
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex Paperback – April 6, 2009
Explore your book, then jump right back to where you left off with Page Flip.
View high quality images that let you zoom in to take a closer look.
Enjoy features only possible in digital – start reading right away, carry your library with you, adjust the font, create shareable notes and highlights, and more.
Discover additional details about the events, people, and places in your book, with Wikipedia integration.
Purchase options and add-ons
A New York Times Bestseller
“Rich in dexterous innuendo, laugh-out-loud humor and illuminating fact. It’s compulsively readable.” ―Los Angeles Times Book Review
- Print length336 pages
- LanguageEnglish
- PublisherW. W. Norton & Company
- Publication dateApril 6, 2009
- Dimensions5.5 x 0.8 x 8.3 inches
- ISBN-100393334791
- ISBN-13978-0393334791
The Amazon Book Review
Book recommendations, author interviews, editors' picks, and more. Read it now.
Frequently bought together

Similar items that may ship from close to you
Editorial Reviews
Review
― San Francisco Chronicle
"[Mary Roach] is a bold, tenacious, and insatiable reporter. . . . A greatly satisfying romp."
― New York Times Book Review
"Roll over, Kinsey. Mary Roach has done it again.... Bonk proves that full-bodied research can be riveting."
― O, The The Oprah Magazine
"Roach is a fearless and witty reporter."
― Wall Street Journal
"[An] account that is at once revealing―alarmingly so―and very very funny. She studs (forgive me) her journey with a multitude of knee-crossing bits of fact that will enliven bedtime conversation everywhere."
― Erik Larson, author of Devil in the White City
About the Author
Product details
- Publisher : W. W. Norton & Company; Reprint edition (April 6, 2009)
- Language : English
- Paperback : 336 pages
- ISBN-10 : 0393334791
- ISBN-13 : 978-0393334791
- Item Weight : 9.5 ounces
- Dimensions : 5.5 x 0.8 x 8.3 inches
- Best Sellers Rank: #436,120 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #371 in Physiology (Books)
- #656 in Anatomy (Books)
- #1,352 in Sex & Sexuality
- Customer Reviews:
Important information
To report an issue with this product or seller, click here.
About the author

Mary Roach is the author of Grunt: The Curious Science of Humans at War, Packing for Mars: The Curious Science of Life in the Void, Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex, Spook: Science Tackles the Afterlife, and Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers. Her writing has appeared in Outside, Wired, National Geographic, and the New York Times Magazine, among others. She lives in Oakland, California.
Customer reviews
Customer Reviews, including Product Star Ratings help customers to learn more about the product and decide whether it is the right product for them.
To calculate the overall star rating and percentage breakdown by star, we don’t use a simple average. Instead, our system considers things like how recent a review is and if the reviewer bought the item on Amazon. It also analyzed reviews to verify trustworthiness.
Learn more how customers reviews work on Amazon-
Top reviews
Top reviews from the United States
There was a problem filtering reviews right now. Please try again later.
Roach presents a wide variety of studies from famous early scholars like Kinsey and Masters & Johnson to obscure present-day scientists like the Egyptian researcher who has to find prostitutes to have intercourse with inflated condoms in order to study nerve reflexes in the female nether regions. Sometimes, the research involves animals, as in the case of researchers trying to determine whether the female orgasm draws semen up further toward the fallopian tubes by studying pigs, or studies of mating rituals of monkeys and how they compare and contrast to those of humans. Though most often the studies are human-centric and ask questions such as: why do a few women orgasm with excessive (and, unfortunately, embarrassing) ease, while too many others have difficulty achieving that result at all? And, why aren’t sex toys better designed to achieve their objective?
I give Roach bonus points on a couple grounds. First, there is the plentiful combination of humor and fun facts that make the book extremely readable. Second, Roach takes some personal risk when, for example, taking part in an imaging study with her husband that involved intimacy in an MRI. That is not even to mention the many things she must have seen that she can never unsee on her global tour that took her to places like Taiwan and Egypt as well as to conventions and research parks across the US.
It should be pointed out that there are important and serious topics being addressed by the science in the book, issues like: erectile dysfunction, sexual dissatisfaction (and its adverse effects upon relationships), and fertility difficulties. So, it’s not all jokes and quirky facts. Solutions to problems (surgical, pharmaceutical, and even psychological) are discussed, though there is a lot of basic science to consider as well. (For the less scientifically-oriented, basic science is that which doesn’t have a specific objective, but is rather to enhance understanding so that further down the road economically and practically viable solutions can be achieved. The lack of specific objective means this type of science can be particularly tricky to get funded. It also makes for some of the more amusing anecdotes because – unlike painful issues of persistent genital arousal disorder or erectile dysfunction – its easier to form jokes about penis cameras and romancing a sow.)
The book consists of fifteen chapters. As is common in Roach’s book, there’s not an obvious organizational schema – except the first chapter which is a bit more general and the last which answers the old question, “who has more fun, and why?” [except the answer isn’t “blondes or redheads” but rather heterosexual or homosexual couples.] That said, there is a grouping of male genitalia (ch. 6-8) versus female genitalia (ch. 9-12) studies. There are some photos (not particularly graphic) as well as endnotes and references.
I found this book to be fascinating and highly readable, and would recommend it for anyone with an interest in anatomy and physiology, or in sex for that matter.
This book is, if you hadn't guessed from the title, is about sexuality, and each chapter focuses on a different study of human sexuality, from impotence ("ED") remedies to analysis of orgasm to the role of the clitoris in sex, all the way to an absurd chapter about how pleasurable sex among pigs produces more piglets. There's an examination of the early research of Alfred Kinsey as well as the later work of Masters and Johnson, how early treatments for "hysteria" were just doctors diddling their patients, and a doctor who reconstructs penises.
Roach has a nice, easygoing way of approaching science topics, People who like their science texts completely serious should avoid, however.
Dear Ms. Roach, Many thanks for your interest in our research. You are welcome to interview me in London. ... However, to arrange a new in-action would be very difficult, mainly due to the difficulty in recruiting volunteers. If your organization is able to recruit brave couple(s) for an intimate (but noninvasive) study, I would be happy to arrange and perform one.
My organization gave some thought to this. What couple would do this? More direly, who wanted to pay the three or four thousand dollars it would cost to fly them both to London and put them up in a nice hotel? My organization balked. It called its husband. "You know how you were saying you haven't been to Europe in twenty-five years?" ..."
or
"The Upsuck Chronicles: Does orgasm boost fertility, and what do pigs know about it?"
The inseminators wear white. Their coveralls are white and their boots are white, and they themselves are white, too, it being the tail end of a long, dark winter in Denmark. Their names are Martin, Morten, and Thomas, and they have twenty sows to inseminate before noon. An informal competition exists among the inseminators of Øeslevgaard Farm, I am told—not to inseminate more sows than anyone else, but to inseminate them better. To produce the most piglets.
To win requires patience and finesse in an area few men know anything about: the titillation of the female pig. Research by the Department for Nutrition and Reproduction at Denmark's National Committee for Pig Production showed that sexually stimulating a sow while you artificially inseminate her leads to a six percent improvement in fertility. This in turn led to a government-backed Five-Point Stimulation Plan for pig farmers, complete with instructional DVD and four-color posters to tack on barn walls. . . .
Martin, Morten, and Thomas are in the break room, eating bread with jam and drinking coffee from a slim steel thermos. They are uncomfortable speaking in English, and I speak no Danish. We are dependent on Anne Marie Hedeboe, a visiting pig production researcher whose colleague Mads Thor Madsen drafted the Five-Point Stimulation Plan for sows. The mood in the room is a little starched. I called Morten Martin. I referred to the owner of the farm as "Boss Man," which in Danish means "snot." Unspoken questions hover in the air: Do you find it arousing to stimulate a sow? How often are young male farm workers caught getting fresh with the stock? For their part, the inseminators must be wondering why on earth I've come here.
I could not adequately explain to them, but I will explain to you. Please don't worry. This chapter is not about pig sex. It is about female orgasm and whether it serves a purpose outside the realm of pleasure. What is accepted dogma in the pig community—that the uterine contractions caused by stimulation and/or orgasm draw in the sperm and boost the odds of conception—was for hundreds of years the subject of lively debate in medical circles. You don't hear much these days about uterine "upsuck" - or "insuck," as it was also known— and I'm wondering: Do the pigs know something we don't know?








