It's a well-informed and well-written book that presents all that is known about sex and draws from all the top sex research at the time. And it presents itself in a format easy to read for the layman. It goes into all the technical details of the physical act of sex, sexual development physically and socially, and the overall sociology of sex, relationships, and marriage. Most importantly, it delves into the history of it all. For me, it really puts into perspective how we got where we are in regards to modern day sex laws and taboos. Naturally includes stuff about pedophilia and argues in favor of childhood sexuality.
For anyone interested in reading, you can skip over the biology chapters. The sociology is the most interesting. Though when you're done reading that you might want to come back to the biology as it can still contain some interesting insights. The book is written in such a way that you can easily jump in at pretty much any chapter, so here's some chapters I recommend starting with:
Development of Behavior: Infancy and Childhood
Which goes into how this notion of the "pure" and "innocent" child got popularized.
Current Sex Laws in the U.S.
Which goes into how utterly absurd the sex laws in the US have gotten.
The Medical Model of Sexual Deviance
And interesting look at how and why people approach deviant sexual behavior the way that they do.
The Sexually Opressed
On why sexual oppression seems to perpetuate.
I'm posting this mostly for myself.This book does not contain any fresh speculations or sensational findings. Nor does it want to scandalize, radicalize, or otherwise upset anyone. It deliberately refrains from presenting any research of its own. Instead, it merely repeats what has been said many times by the best contemporary scholars and scientists. In short, it is nothing more and nothing less than a piece of popularization. It is not trying to say anything new, but rather to state the well-known as clearly as possible in a coherent and methodical fashion.