Despite its rather staid subtitle-"Some Things That All Sane People Ought to Know About Sex Nature and Sex Functioning; Its Place in the Economy of Life, Its Proper Training and Righteous Exercise"-this 1919 volume may well be one of the most forthright books about human sexuality written in the pre-Joy of Sex era.

Actively campaigning against societally sanctioned ignorance, medical doctor HARLAND WILLIAM LONG
(b. 1869) uses clinical yet passionate language in his call for men and women alike to be fully educated about their own bodies as well as those of their lovers. This straightforward work is still startling today in its advocacy of detailed explanation not just of the physical act of sex but of the emotional art of lovemaking, its advocacy of masturbation, and its insistence on celebrating the uniquely spiritual, though not necessarily religious, aspects of love and marriage.

This is must-reading for anyone who believes that frank and honest sex education is an invention of the 1960s-and for anyone who wishes to contest that misbelief.