The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States; Sex in America: A Definitive Survey

The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States

The Social Organization of Sexuality: Sexual Practices in the United States, Edward O Lauman University of Chicago Press, pounds sterling39.95, pp 752 ISBN 0 226 46957 3

Sex in America: A Definitive Survey

Sex in America: A Definitive Survey, Robert T Michael, John H Gagnon, Edward O Laumann, Gina Kolata Little, Brown, pounds sterling16.99, pp 288 ISBN 0 316 91191 7

The findings reported in these two books—one a weighty academic tome, the other a lighter version aimed at a lay readership—represent the latest addition to a growing body of research into human sexual behaviour, which has gained its impetus from the need for data to help predict and prevent further spread of HIV.

Yet even now, when AIDS has made sexual behaviour a necessary subject for scientific inquiry, there is still a good deal of nervousness about it. The history of the project that resulted in these books reads uncannily like that of the British survey. Planned by an academic team, it originally …