The Story of V : Opening Pandora's Box - Softcover

Blackledge, Catherine

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0753817764 ISBN 13: 9780753817766

Publisher: Orion Paperbacks, 2004

It is the seat of female sexual pleasure, and the passage for both the creation and the birth of humankind. Yet we know less about the vagina than we do about any other organ of the human body. Why? In this dazzling smorgasbord of facts about female genitalia, Catherine Blackledge explores how the vagina has been conceived and misconceived over the centuries. In the past, medicine has misrepresented female sexual anatomy, reducing its remarkable complexities to the notion of a passive vessel. But, as this book shows, science is at last beginning to reveal the true structure and function of female genitalia, and the dynamic nature of the vagina's role in both sexual pleasure and reproduction. With a wide-ranging perspective that takes in prehistoric art, ancient history, linguistics, mythology, evolutinary theory, reproductive biology and medicine, Catherine Blackledge unveils the hidden marvels of the female form.

About the Author:

Cath Blackledge has a Ph.D. in chemistry from Birkbeck College, London. She has worked as a reporter, news editor and editor for numerous specialist publications, including European Chemical News and Pharmaceutical Business News, and is a former science and medical correspondent for The European. Now a freelance science writer and broadcaster, she also holds a part-time research position at the Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine. In 1999, she was shortlisted for the prestigious Glaxo Science Writers Prize.

Review:

'Sings of the triumphant vagina that may have its detractors in the West but elsewhere - and in nature - is heroic, honoured and revered... The West gets it wrong. But even in our benighted civilzation the vagina's glories are just below the surface and there to be recuperated... This is a finely produced book from a major publisher and it is meant to bee taken seriously. -- Thomas Laquer TLS 'For a full discussion of the revolution in biological thinking about the vagina that has happened over the last seven years, you need Catherine Blackledge's exuberant (and PURPLE) THE STORY OF V' -- Lucy Ellman The Herald

• Publisher: Orion Paperbacks
• Publication date: 2004
• ISBN 10: 0753817764
• ISBN 13: 9780753817766
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 384