Maier - Masters of Sex

*A CHICAGO TRIBUNE FAVORITE NONFICTION BOOK OF 2009*

Praise for Masters of Sex

Told with patience and care... Maier writes well, and with humor.

New York Times

Maiers illuminating biography delves into the lives of the couple that started sciences sexual revolution.

Discover

Absorbing... Masters of Sex is this springs true must-read book for those looking to revisit the heady, early days of the sexual revolution.

The American Prospect

Award-winning biographer Maier... delivers the first in-depth look at a complex couple who helped revolutionize the study of human sexual response. Academics and amateur sexperts alike will rejoice.

Library Journal

A wonderfully written and totally absorbing look at an amazing couple.

Booklist

Perhaps influenced by its steamy subject matter, Masters of Sex... may strike some readers as unusually graphic for a biography, but this unsettling story of sex and science in theory and practice is ultimately more cautionary than titillating.

O, The Oprah Magazine

Writing a readable but serious biography of Masters and Johnson was no easy task. The natural impulse is to drain such passionate clinicality of personality and leave a hollow crusade in its place. Maiers book resists it constantly. Its about heroes and flaws and a couple of people whose lives underlay a good half of what we know for sure about what we all think we know so much.

The Buffalo News (Editors Choice)

Masters of Sex is a terrific book about the unlikely couple who touched off the sexual revolution. More than a biography, this is an intimate history of sex in the twentieth century.

Debby Applegate, winner of the 2007 Pulitzer Prize in Biography for The Most Famous Man in America: The Biography of Henry Ward Beecher

Thomas Maier has written the intimate, engaging biography that Masters and Johnson deserve. Critics often accused the pair of dehumanizing sex with their researchof removing its mystery. But as Gini Johnson told Playboy in 1968, mystery is just another name for superstition and myth. The more we know about the physiology of arousal, the better we can enjoy the uniquely human experience of sex for pleasure. Masters and Johnson showed tremendous courage in their research.

Hugh Hefner, editor in chief, Playboy magazine

No novelist could come up with something as remarkable as the real life story of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the married experts giving advice to America on sex and love. With insightful reporting and writing, Thomas Maier has captured this extraordinary relationship between these male and female sex researchers, a legacy that transformed the way couples live today.

Dr. Ruth K. Westheimer

The subject of this booksex and loveshould interest just about everyone. As a bonus, Thomas Maier is a very fine writer, an accomplished biographer, and an astute reporter. If you read only one biography this year, it should be this first-ever look at the secretive lives of Masters and Johnson.

Nelson DeMille, bestselling author of The Gold Coast and The Gate House

A well-written and insightful account of Masters and Johnson, who, in a clinical sense, probably knew more about sex and marital love than any other couple in America.

Gay Talese, author of Thy Neighbors Wife and A Writers Life

Its hard to imagine any sex researcher or serious student of sexuality who wouldnt profit from reading this book. The information revealed in Masters of Sex has never surfaced beforeand besides being a real contribution to the history of science, its a totally captivating read!

Pepper Schwartz, Ph.D., past president of the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexuality, and author of Prime: Adventures and Advice About Sex, Love and the Sensual Years

ALSO BY THOMAS MAIER

The Kennedys: Americas Emerald Kings

Dr. Spock: An American Life

Newhouse: All the Glitter, Power and Glory of Americas Richest Media Empire and the Secretive Man Behind It

THOMAS MAIER

BASIC BOOKS

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

New York

Copyright 2009 Thomas Maier

Hardcover first published in 2009 by Basic Books,

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

Paperback first published in 2010 by Basic Books

Updated paperback first published in 2013 by Basic Books

The photographs in this book are reproduced by permission.

Page vii: William Masters and Virginia Johnson: courtesy of the Photographic Services Collection, University Archives, Department of Special Collections, Washington University Libraries.

Pages 169, 239: Masters and Johnson with Human Sexual Response, Masters and Johnson on Meet the Press: copyright Bettmann/CORBIS.

Insert photos: The Human Touch, A Sex Therapy Better Than Freud, Master Doctor, Bill and Gini: courtesy of the Photographic Services Collection, University Archives, Department of Special Collections, Washington University Libraries. Unmarried Researchers, Remembrances: Leonard McCombe, Time & Life Pictures, Getty Images. Feminist: Becker Medical Library, Washington University School of Medicine. Couple of the Year: courtesy of the editors of TIME Magazine copyright 2008. Lost Loves: from the personal files of Robert C. Kolodny, M.D.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 250 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10107.

Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 810-4145, ext. 5000, or e-mail .

Designed by Pauline Brown

Set in 11.5 point Garamond

The Library of Congress has catalogued the hardcover as follows:

Maier, Thomas, 1956

Masters of sex : the life and times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the couple who taught America how to love / Thomas Maier.

p. cm.

Includes bibliographical references and index.

1. Masters, William H. 2. Johnson, Virginia E. 3. SexologistsBiography. 4. SexologyResearchHistory. I. Title.

HQ18.3.M35 2009

306.7092'273dc22

[B]

2008050803

ISBN 978-0-46504-499-3 (e-book)

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

For my godparents, June and William Underwood.

The profoundest of all our sensualities is the sense of truth.

D. H. LAWRENCE

William Masters and Virginia Johnson

.

What is this thing called love?

COLE PORTER

S ex, in all its glorious expressions, has been an integral part of the American experience in my four biographiesrespectively, about Si Newhouse, Benjamin Spock, the Kennedys, and now Masters and Johnson. As Dr. Spock, the best-selling expert who raised Americas baby-boom generation, once told me with disarming honesty,