Capsule Reviews

Perv, Behind the Shock Machine, The Gaia Hypothesis, and Life at the Speed of Light

Written byBob Grant

| 3 min read

Listen with Speechify

0:00

3:00

By Jesse Bering Scientific American/Farrar, Straus and Giroux, October 2013 Science writer extraordinaire and erstwhile psychologist Jesse Bering has again plumbed the depths of human sexuality in his latest offering, Perv. After last year’s Why is the Penis Shaped Like That?, Bering again demonstrates that he feels right at home exploring the more salacious aspects of the human condition. In Perv, Bering deconstructs scores of “paraphilias,” which he defines as “sexual orientations toward people or things that most of us wouldn’t consider to be particularly erotic.” He injects a fair amount of historical and societal perspective into his treatment of both well-known and rarer ones: acrotomophilia (arousal to amputees), lithophilia (arousal to stone and gravel), and psychrophilia (arousal to being cold and watching others who ...

Interested in reading more?

Become a Member of

Receive full access to digital editions of The Scientist, as well as TS Digest, feature stories, more than 35 years of archives, and much more!

Join for free today

Already a member?

Add The Scientist as a preferred Google source to see more of our trusted coverage.

Meet the Author

Bob Grant
Go to The Scientist's LinkedIn Page
From 2017 to 2022, Bob Grant was Editor in Chief of The Scientist, where he started in 2007 as a Staff Writer. Before joining the team, he worked as a reporter at Audubon and earned a master’s degree in science journalism from New York University. In his previous life, he pursued a career in science, getting a bachelor’s degree in wildlife biology from Montana State University and a master’s degree in marine biology from the College of Charleston in South Carolina. Bob edited Reading Frames and other sections of the magazine.
View Full Profile