An absorbing and in-depth history of the cultural epidemic we call sex addiction, that's both authoritative and accessible. Erotic Review This is an exquisitely researched, persuasive and often funny account of how, over the last thirty years, enjoying sex more publicly or enthusiastically than conservatives might have wished was turned into a phantasmic syndrome - sex addiction - that became real enough to support a small army of therapists and patients. But it is also a model study more generally of cultural epigenesis, of how the pains, pleasures and foibles of everyday life become pathologies that take a moral, political and financial toll on society. Thomas Laqueur, University of California, Berkeley As the sexual cultures of many Western nations have become more fluid, it is perhaps more than curious that the discourse of sexual addiction has gained popular and medical legitimacy. Is it a form of regulating irregular sexualities, a further instance of the medicalization of moral thinking and personal life, or a scientific advance? Reay, Attwood and Gooder provide a much needed critical-historical analysis of this cultural event. Steven Seidman, State University of New York at Albany An absorbing and in-depth history of the cultural epidemic we call sex addiction, that's both authoritative and accessible. An absorbing and in-depth history of the cultural epidemic we call sex addiction, that's both authoritative and accessible.