Scholarly study of female victims of lost limbs and the men who eroticize them. A recently discovered love twist, it’s known scientifically as acrotomophilia, viewed legally as a “perversion or deviancy” and socially as “kinky.” Presently, there are more than a million amputee women in the United States, and who knows how many paraphiliacs pining for their limbless Madonna.”These men are the ‘devotees’ whose hearts pound when they see a woman with one leg swinging between crutches, men who daydream of dining with a woman with only one hand to cut her steak. These are the men to whom a complete sexual experience means making love to an incomplete woman, an amputee.” Chapters on social stigma, prosthesis problems, sexual fantasies, amputees in literature and film, and women’s personal stories. GR

Publisher: Irvington
Hardback: 337 pages

“Facts and phalluses” about herbs, drugs and concentrated virilizing foods. The injectible drug that turns men into ramrods in minutes. The African bark that restores potency in 50 percent of men: yohimbe. Minoxidyl. Kava Kava. Secret Chinese elixirs. Plus, the truth about Spanish Fly and other “faux passion potions.” GR

Publisher: Added Dimensions
Paperback: 64 pages

How to be your own sex partner. “Once a man has tasted his own penis, no other sensation can quite match it.” Presents a regimen of exercises, personal experiences, a list of 100-plus self-suck videos, and the seven most popular positions: the Stork, the Lotus, Over Easy, the Plow, etc. Lots of pictures. GR

Publisher: Added Dimensions
Paperback: 100 pages
Illustrated

Out of the dungeons and into the streets. A collection of essays spotlighting the politically emerging leather/fetish/SM community. Topics include: “Pride Day: Where Should We Be?”; “Butcher Than Thou”; “Kink Nation: Identity Politics In Flatland”; “National Groups: Why We Need Them”; “Possession”; and “Soul Retrieval.” Not your average Democratic or Republican platform issues. Not even close. GR

Publisher: Daedalus
Paperback: 156 pages

Cock’s-eye-view of the working boys of London in photos taken between 1918 and the 1950s. The pictures are compelling—and so are the boys, even fully clothed! Street hustlers with hardons. Butch buddies modeling kilts, army uniforms and wet shorts. Boys in bed, boys shaving, boys hitching up their pants. And then there’s curly-haired Ralph… the blue-collar, blond Adonis. The roving, randy “middle-class toff with a camera” who snapped all the shots was architect/ex-army officer Montague Glover. These rare glimpses into the gay past “document the three obsessions of his life: the search for ‘rough trade’ on the streets of London; men in uniform; and the handsome East End lover with whom he shared his life for over 50 years—surmounting all obstacles of prejudice, class difference and separation.” Also includes Monty and Ralph’s torrid love letters. The result is “a remarkable story; not only of the private life of one gay man, but of the whole hidden history of what gay men really looked like, felt and dreamed of in the first 50 years of this century.” GR

Publisher: Serpent's Tail
Paperback: 144 pages
Illustrated

Brand-by-brand comparisons of more than 120 condoms sold in the U.S. and Canada. Width, length, lubrication, texture, price and special features are covered. GR

Publisher: Added Dimensions
Paperback: 128 pages

Adventures in genderbending, edited by “two butches and a barracuda femme.” “What is butch? Sexual power of a kind that no woman is supposed to have… A fearless collection of stories and art, essays and interviews by butches (and the women who love them).” Or, says one dyke daddy, “I’m proud of my tits and I want people to look at them… FUCK YOU!” GR

Publisher: Cleis
Paperback: 232 pages
Illustrated

“A stroke here, a pat there, a quick nuzzle in that gorgeous fur… though: that one spot, somewhere down below, generally remains untouched… “ But what about Beauty and the Beast? Leda and the Swan? King Kong and Fay Wray? Didn’t they do the wild thing? A Dutch biologist traces our “interspecies love affair” with animals in art and popular culture, and shows how social taboos are slighted when it comes to our furry friends. “So we see that love takes ever new and unexpected forms. Those who are surprised by this are surprised about themselves. And rightly so, since no one will ever be able to explain the source of that feeling that comes from deep inside when you look a woman or a man or a cat or a rabbit in the eyes and say, ‘I love you.’” GR

Publisher: Verso
Hardback: 276 pages
Illustrated

If an army marches on its stomach, then this coffee-table ode to the enamel arts shows that a civilization progresses on its dental work. Dentistry is an ancient practice—Mayan skulls of the 9th century show inlays of jade and turquoise, and molars bound together with gold wire have been excavated from Old Kingdom sites in Egypt. The frontspiece of a lost Arabic manuscript of the 13th century shows a dentist caring for a woman with a toothache. He is prescribing a medicinal plant growing between them as a remedy for relief. The barber to the King of Scotland in 1503 had simple dental care to the King’s court, offering hot irons on a tooth for pain and cosmetic tooth filing. By the 1880s, deluxe denture bases could be designed with a palate of swagged gold-and-porcelain teeth set in Vulcanite. At the same time, newly established American dental schools didn’t admit women. America’s first female dentist was Emeline Roberts, who began pulling teeth alongside her husband in 1859. She was eventually elected to membership in the Connecticut State Dental Society—34 years after she first began her practice. GR

Publisher: Abrams
Hardback: 320 pages
Illustrated

Explores our dangerous dependence on a force of nature we don’t really understand. “Natural electricity is generally a beneficent force, controlled as it is by magnetism. But the electricity that now pulses through our cables in our homes, offices and factories, beneath our feet and above our heads, has been unleashed from its magnetic bonds; even the electrical industries acknowledge that prolonged exposure is harmful. In our everyday lives it can make us ill; we can develop severe allergies to it. And in its purest, strongest form, in the computer world, it can influence our minds, alter our characters, and markedly affect our health—already physicians have recognized a painful and dangerous physical syndrome that attends intense and protracted work with a computer… And something even more threatening may happen: a change in consciousness and character that has already been observed may come to affect an important segment of humanity.” GR

Publisher: New Amsterdam
Hardback: 287 pages