Violet Blue’s Selected Books for the Manual for Civilization
As a library designed to help sustain or rebuild civilization, it is vital that we have authoritative books about sex and reproduction. Civilization won’t have a future without them.
We asked writer Violet Blue to curate our sexuality book list.
Violet is also a journalist who writes about privacy and tech. A Long Now charter member, she gave one of our first ever Interval salon talks about privacy in 02014. She also took part in our Long Conversation event in 02010.
Among 16 books on sexuality that Violet selected for the Manual are reference books; science books; erotica; volumes on gender; how to talk to kids about sex; even robots.
Violet’s comments for each selection are in italics below
Titles marked ** were suggested by fellow sexuality expert Susie Bright
The Guide to Getting it On (7th edition) by Paul Joannides
This book is so accurate and complete about everything surrounding sexual contact, there’s no need for individual books on specific acts, health concerns or even sexual mishaps. Warm, welcoming, fun, smart, explicit and illustrated, it leaves no question about adult sexuality unanswered and expertly weaves together sex information from our greatest sex researchers and contemporary sex educators alike.
What Makes A Baby by Cory Silverberg, Fiona Smyth
If there’s one book for helping kids understand sexuality and gender, this book (appropriate for all ages) is wonderfully accessible, complete and makes the “big talk” into a lovely narrative about family.
My (New) Gender Workbook by Kate Bornstein
This smart, humorous workbook is essential for understanding gender as it relates to our sexual identities, our sexual roles, and the way we identify and our understand sexual orientation — as well as the experiences of others (including our loved ones).
**Erotic Fantasies, A Study of the Sexual Imagination by Phyllis and Eberhard Kronhausen
At the heart of human sexuality, we find the richness, complexity and necessity of human sexual fantasies. Standing on the shoulders of the Kinsey Report, this book is both at once an explicit compendium of fantasies, an informative exploration of what fantasies are, and a guide to why they’re inextricably woven into the fabric of our sexual selves.
Erotica Universalis by Gilles Neret
Beautiful, striking, lurid, romantic, informative, and above all — unbridled insight into the erotic imagination, obsessions, traditions and sexual desires of a human civilization are between the covers of this erotic art bestiary. A tasteful collection of erotic art and imagery through the ages.
The Collected Erotica: An Illustrated Celebration of Human Sexuality Through the Ages by Charlotte Hill and William Wallace
This astonishingly comprehensive book presents over 2000 years of Eastern and Western sexual art and literature. Images from private collections, libraries and galleries are combined with a huge array of erotic short stores by writers that include Boccaccio, Oscar Wilde, Jean Cocteau, Erica Jong, Henry Miller, Anais Nin, Pauline Reage and more.
X: The Erotic Treasury by Susie Bright
Erotica of the 21st century is unlike anything that precedes; not only in narrative and style, but in a whole new range of sexual expression, sex acts, female sexual agency, male sexual expression, and intellectually complex, emotionally sophisticated scenarios. And inspiration is important when you’re re-keying civilization.
Everything You Know About Sex is Wrong by Russ Kick
This nonfiction anthology brings together some of the greatest minds that have lived sexual lives loudly (and sometimes proudly) outside contemporary mainstream culture in essays that explore society’s sexual misconceptions.
Art of Sexual Ecstasy by Margot Anand
The most full, deep, and practical book on spirituality and sexuality of our era details the passion and implementation of Tantric sexuality.
Love and Sex With Robots by David Levy
Human sexuality and technology have been intertwined much longer than the Internet era has been around, and so a book so thoroughly encompassing people’s sexual and emotional attraction and attachment to robots, artificial intelligence and tech-related objects is mind-opening.
Fetish Sex: A Complete Guide by Violet Blue
The edges of human sexuality are the least understood. I hesitated about suggesting my own book, but so far no other book explores the actual practices of those who sexualize and have sexual relationships with the bizarre, in a nonjudgmental, all-gender and all-orientation approach. A definitive guide to the sexual practices, styles, and fantasies that live far outside the norm.
**The Erotic Mind by Jack Morin
A psychological exploration of peak sexual experience, and why they happen to us in complicated ways such as during grief or when faced with conflict.
Bonk: The Curious Coupling of Science and Sex by Mary Roach
A nonfiction exploration of sexuality and science — not only human sexuality and all its strange foibles and unbelievable variables, but also sex in science and commerce.
Healing Sex by Staci Hanes
A complete, essential and sex-positive guide for people of all genders and orientations that have experienced and survived sexual trauma, violence or assault — and their partners.
The Transgender Child: A Handbook for Families and Professionals by Stephanie A. Brill and Rachel Pepper
While aimed at parents with gender-variant kids, and providing a much-needed guide for coping with positive, negative and awkward scenarios, this book is essential reading for everyone in our gender-variant, compassion-challenged world.
Sensuous Magic (2nd edition) by Patrick Califia
No other book comes close to this incredible guide to BDSM practices and relationships. This tome is a complete reference and advice guide, demystifying — and providing erotic illumination to — power exchange, pleasure and sensation, erotic punishment, bondage, sex in S/M scenes, communication, negotiation, and consent.
Our thanks to Violet Blue for her considered selections for the Manual for Civilization library. Her selections will join book recommended by Neal Stephenson, Stewart Brand, Maria Popova, Kevin Kelly, Brian Eno, other invited experts, as well as Long Now Foundation members.
You can visit the books we’ve collected so far at The Interval at Long Now, our cafe/bar in San Francisco which also serves as Long Now’s headquarters.
This list is an excerpt of the 3,500 book crowd-curated Manual For Civilization library which we are compiling to back up the essential knowledge of civilization. More than 800 titles are already available online at The Internet Archive.
Originally published at blog.longnow.org on March 11, 02014.
