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Author | David Reuben |
---|---|
Cover artist | Lawrence Ratzkin |
Country | United States |
Language | English |
Subject | Sex |
Genre | Non-fiction |
Publisher | McKay [1] |
Publication date | June 1969 |
Media type | |
Pages | 368 pp. |
ISBN | 0-06-019267-4 |
OCLC | 30542 |
306.7 21 | |
LC Class | HQ31 .R436 1999 |
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (*But Were Afraid to Ask) is a book (1969, updated 1999) by California psychiatrist [2] David Reuben. 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. [3] It was "among the top 20 all-time best sellers of the 20th century in the United States". [4]
The book was a Number 1 best-seller in 51 countries and reached more than 100 million readers. [3] In 1972, it was parodied by Woody Allen in the comedy film of the same name and received a favorable response from movie critics. [5]
The book had a significant impact. It was favorably reviewed by The New York Times [ citation needed ] and Life Magazine , 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, [6] on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson.
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", [7] [8] by Gore Vidal, [9] in The New York Review of Books , for its homophobia. In 1972, Playboy magazine published an article purporting to expose 100 errors in the book. [10]
Reuben wrote an updated version ("he says he has altered 96 percent of his first edition" [3] ) which was published 30 years later, in 1999 and 2000. [11] In particular, his views on homosexuality, abortion, and pornography were updated. [12] Andrew Tobias reviewed the book, in 1999, for The Advocate. [13] [14] It was reviewed by the Los Angeles Times , [15] The Baltimore Sun , [16] the Chicago Tribune, and others.
Its curiosity-arousing title and its question-and-answer format has inspired hundreds of similarly titled and formatted research papers. [17]
Jack Benny's "Everything you always wanted to know about Jack Benny, but were afraid to ask" featured Reuben. [18]
Eugene Luther Gore Vidal was an American writer and public intellectual known for his epigrammatic wit. His novels and essays interrogated the social and sexual norms he perceived as driving American life.
Sex manuals are books which explain how to perform sexual practices; they also commonly feature advice on birth control, and sometimes on safe sex and sexual relationships.
The New York Review of Books is a semi-monthly magazine with articles on literature, culture, economics, science and current affairs. Published in New York City, it is inspired by the idea that the discussion of important books is an indispensable literary activity. Esquire called it "the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English language." In 1970, writer Tom Wolfe described it as "the chief theoretical organ of Radical Chic".
Jerome Silberman, known professionally as Gene Wilder, was an American actor, comedian, writer and filmmaker. He was known mainly for his comedic roles, but also for his portrayal of Willy Wonka in Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory (1971). He collaborated with Mel Brooks on the films The Producers (1967), Blazing Saddles (1974) and Young Frankenstein (1974), and with Richard Pryor in the films Silver Streak (1976), Stir Crazy (1980), See No Evil, Hear No Evil (1989) and Another You (1991).
Anthony Kevin Dungy is an American former football player and coach who served as a head coach in the National Football League (NFL) for 13 seasons with the Tampa Bay Buccaneers and Indianapolis Colts. Dungy's teams became perennial postseason contenders under his leadership, missing the playoffs only twice with Tampa Bay. He led the Colts to victory in Super Bowl XLI over the Chicago Bears, making him the first African-American head coach to win the Super Bowl.
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* is a 1972 American sex comedy anthology film directed by Woody Allen. It consists of a series of short sequences loosely inspired by David Reuben's 1969 book of the same name.
Lou Jacobi was a Canadian character actor. Jacobi came to prominence for his role as Mr. Van Daan in the 1955 Broadway production of The Diary of Anne Frank which he reprised in the 1959 film version. He also acted in the films Irma la Douce (1963), Little Murders (1971), Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* (1972), Next Stop, Greenwich Village (1976), The Lucky Star (1980), Arthur (1981), My Favorite Year (1982), and Avalon (1990).
Gael Greene was an American restaurant critic, author, and novelist. She became New York magazine's restaurant critic in fall 1968, at a time when most New Yorkers were unsophisticated about food and there were few chefs anyone knew by name, and for four decades both documented and inspired the city's and America's growing obsession with food. She was a pioneering "foodie."
Jay Robinson was an American actor specializing in character roles. He achieved his greatest fame playing Emperor Caligula in the film The Robe (1953) and its sequel Demetrius and the Gladiators (1954), and years later portraying the boss of the character played by Warren Beatty in Shampoo (1975).
David R. Reuben is a psychiatrist, and author. He is most famous for his book Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* .
Fiction in the 1970s brought a return of old-fashioned storytelling, especially with Erich Segal's Love Story. The early seventies also saw the decline of previously well-respected writers, such as Saul Bellow and Peter De Vries, both of whom released poorly received novels at the start of the decade, but rebounded critically as the decade wore on. Racism remained a key literary subject. John Updike emerged as a major literary figure with his 1971 novel Rabbit Redux. Reflections of the 1960s experience also found roots in the literature of the decade through the works of Joyce Carol Oates and Wright Morris. With the rising cost of hardcover books and the increasing readership of "genre fiction", the paperback became a popular medium. Criminal non-fiction also became a popular topic. Irreverence and satire, typified in Kurt Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, were common literary elements. The horror genre also emerged, and by the late seventies Stephen King had become one of the most popular novelists in America, a coveted position he maintained in the following decade.
Justin Richardson is an American author and psychiatrist best known for co-authoring And Tango Makes Three with Peter Parnell.
Heather MacRae is an American actress known for her role in the Woody Allen 1972 comedy Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* .
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George Albert "Scotty" Bowers was an American entrepreneur, active from 1945 to 1980 procuring prostitutes for Hollywood industry insiders, many closeted about bisexual or homosexual liaisons. Bowers was described having "a savant-like quality: a result of his refusal to be embarrassed by sex."
Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex* may refer to:
Fear: Trump in the White House is a non-fiction book by American journalist Bob Woodward about the presidency of Donald Trump. The book was released on September 11, 2018. Woodward based the book on hundreds of hours of interviews with members of the Trump administration. The book's publisher Simon & Schuster announced that it had sold 1.1 million copies in the first week of its release, making it the fastest selling opener in the company's history.
Volume 6, Issue 278 Part Two
The book is written to sell, sell. It amazes me how an M.D. can know "every thing" about medicine ( he's a psychiatrist), "everything" about sex (Remember Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex But Were Afraid to Ask?)
The taboo against sexual explicitness that earlier resulted in censorship or moral disapproval had disappeared by the second half of the 20th century, so that Jacqueline Susann's novel Valley of the Dolls (1966) and David Reuben's Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex but Were Afraid to Ask (1969) were both among the top 20 all-time best sellers of the 20th century in the United States.
In response to: 'Number One' from the June 4, 1970 issue
via Gore Vidal Pages
ST. MARTIN'S...Reprints: ... (Oct.): ...Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex... ($7.99) by David Reuben, M.D.;