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Sex in America: A Definitive Survey. Robert T. Michael, John H. Gagnon, Edward O. Laumann and Gina Kolata. New York: Little, Brown, 1994, $22.95 (cloth); Warner Books, 1995, $12.95 (paper). Going All the Way: Teenage Girls' Tales of Sex, Romance, and Pregnancy. Sharon Thompson. New York: Hill and Wang, 1995. $24.00 cloth.
Sex seems ubiquitous in our culture. Examples abound in popular magazines, movies, and television programs; increasingly, the subject has entered the political arena. Not only is the behavior of public officials scrutinized, but such contentious policy questions as abortion, AIDS, welfare reform, and gay rights implicate public attitudes about sex.
Despite our preoccupation with sex, we know surprisingly little about sexual behavior in the United States. These two books seek to address our ignorance. They focus on different segments of the population and reflect very different approaches; the contrasts between them are almost as revealing as the insights they offer.
Sex in America is a popularized report of the most comprehensive sex survey ever undertaken in this country. Journalist Gina Kolata joined her academic co-authors to make the data compiled from 90-minute interviews with more than 3,000 randomly-chosen adults accessible to the general public. (The full report, more than twice as long and entitled The Social Organization of Sexuality, was published simultaneously by the University of Chicago Press.) The findings are presented in engaging prose accompanied by easily understood tables and graphics, leavened with apt quotations and anecdotes from mass media.
The study suggests that Americans are more sexually conventional than is usually assumed. For example, married and cohabiting...