''Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask)'' is a book (1969, updated 1999) by
California psychiatrist
A psychiatrist is a physician who specializes in psychiatry, the branch of medicine devoted to the diagnosis, prevention, study, and treatment of mental disorders. Psychiatrists are physicians and evaluate patients to determine whether their sy ...
. It was one of the first
sex manuals that entered mainstream culture in the 1960s, and had a profound effect on sex education and in liberalizing attitudes towards sex.
[
] It was "among the top 20 all-time best sellers of the 20th century in the United States".
History
The book was a Number 1 best-seller in 51 countries and reached more than 100 million readers.
In 1972, it was parodied by
Woody Allen in the
comedy film of the same name and received a favorable response from movie critics.
The book had a significant impact. It was favorably reviewed by ''
The New York Times'' and ''
Life Magazine
''Life'' was an American magazine published weekly from 1883 to 1972, as an intermittent "special" until 1978, and as a monthly from 1978 until 2000. During its golden age from 1936 to 1972, ''Life'' was a wide-ranging weekly general-interest ma ...
'', and, after a massive book tour, would go on to be #1 on ''The New York Times'' bestseller list for 55 weeks. Reuben became a celebrity, guesting, a dozen times,
on
''The Tonight Show'' with
Johnny Carson
John William Carson (October 23, 1925 – January 23, 2005) was an American television host, comedian, writer and producer. He is best known as the host of ''The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson'' (1962–1992). Carson received six Pr ...
.
As popular as the book was, it attracted critics in both the clinical world, and the public. The
LGBT community objected to negative descriptions of homosexuality in the book (for example, Reuben wrote that gay men were "trying to solve the problem with only half the pieces"; lesbianism was relegated to a brief discussion in a section about prostitution). It was negatively reviewed, with "anti-Semitic overtones",
by
Gore Vidal,
in ''
The New York Review of Books'', for its
homophobia
Homophobia encompasses a range of negative attitude (psychology), attitudes and feelings toward homosexuality or people who are identified or perceived as being lesbian, gay or bisexual. It has been defined as contempt, prejudice, aversion, h ...
. In 1972, ''
Playboy'' magazine published an article purporting to expose 100 errors in the book.
Reuben wrote an updated version ("he says he has altered ''96 percent'' of his first edition"
) which was published 30 years later, in 1999 and 2000. In particular, his views on homosexuality, abortion, and pornography were updated.
Andrew Tobias reviewed the book, in 1999, for
''The Advocate''.
It was reviewed by the ''
Los Angeles Times'', ''
The Baltimore Sun'',
the
Chicago Tribune, and others.
Meme
Its curiosity-arousing title and its question-and-answer format has inspired hundreds of similarly titled and formatted research papers.
's "Everything you always wanted to know about Jack Benny, but were afraid to ask" featured Reuben.
Further reading
*
References
External links
"Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex" Semantic Scholar
Semantic Scholar is an artificial intelligence–powered research tool for scientific literature developed at the Allen Institute for AI and publicly released in November 2015. It uses advances in natural language processing to provide summaries ...
1969 non-fiction books
Sex manuals
Literature related to the sexual revolution
Non-fiction books adapted into films
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