**This review contains adult language and discusses sex and sexuality in frank terms.** As long as sex has been around, humans have created rules regulating it. Eric Berkowitz’s Sex and Punishment: Four Thousand Years of Judging Desire is an in-depth look at the history of that regulation, from ancient Mesopotamia to Oscar Wilde’s 1895 imprisonment…
Tag: history
Review: Born to Kvetch
No culture has mastered the fine art of complaining better than the Jews. Separate from Hebrew, Yiddish is a complex, nuanced language not for the faint of heart. Meant to lament bad luck while chasing it away at the same time, Yiddish tells the story of a culture all its own. There are phrases for…
Review: Murderous Minds
Disclosure: I received a free copy of Murderous Minds from publisher Pegasus Books, LLC, but was not compensated for discussing/reviewing it. My thoughts on the book are my own. Have you seen a movie or television show featuring a serial killer or heard about a school shooting and thought, “That guy’s a psychopath”? To many…
Review: Broadmoor Revealed
Treatment of the mentally ill has a long and seedy history, a good deal of it revolving around extreme abuse and other scary things like lobotomies and electroshock therapy. Attitudes changed considerably by the Victorian era, although there was quite a way to go before anyone created what we would consider “modern” treatment plans. As…
First Chapter, First Paragraph: Broadmoor Revealed
(First Chapter, First Paragraph is hosted by Bibliophile By the Sea. Every Tuesday we share the first paragraph or two of a book we’re reading or thinking about reading soon. Care to join us?) I don’t read a lot of non-fiction, but when I do I always go for the good stuff — in this…