MASTERS AND JOHNSON

For some strange reason, the books that are reviewed by the Los Angeles Times, my home-town newspaper, not only never seem to be my cup of tea but also are written in such abstruse language that I can’t understand what the reviewer is saying. So I am really beholden to the New York Times weekend book review online for my ideas of what new is in print that I might like to read. That’s exactly where my idea of reading Thomas Maier’s new book MASTERS OF SEX: The Life and Times of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, the Couple Who Taught America How to Love came from.

This was an extremely interesting book to read – well, that’s true but saying it that way is a little misleading. With its subject matter, it was neither scurrilous nor titillating, neither embarrassing nor boring. Right off the bat Maier’s following the childhoods of Bill Masters and Virginia Johnson (a married name) helps the reader understand how the subjects maneuvered through such an amazing adulthood and such a surprising profession. The story is not so much of sex but of the lives of these two people as they progress through researching that ultimately will change them and society alike.

Maier uses the same clinical and appropriate verbiage in describing the ground-breaking sex studies that Masters and Johnson did. His sensitive handling of this material makes this book very readable and of such interest that it is hard to put down. In reading the book there is no cause to titter, which may be a disappointment to some but which I, with my sometimes prudish bent, found very gratifying.

But the big surprise for me was that although I remember when the Masters and Johnson report came out, I don’t look back on it and say it changed my life in any way like Betty Friedan’s “The Feminine Mystique” did. I guess I didn’t pay much attention to it. In the seventies I was busy moving through a divorce and later a new marriage and I suppose this society-changing study just wasn’t on my radar. But in reading this book I was astounded to see in black and white where people were in the ‘50s and ‘60s with their understanding of sex – and where this study allowed us to be taken in the 70’s and 80’s. It seems now as if we have always known these things. But as the book points out, in the 50s the word “pregnant” could not be used on TV. Such a change!

As a biography the book is a stunner. Dr. Ruth Westheimer, whom we all know from those years, says of it, "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."

It’s a very good book.