Desire: A History of European Sexuality

A sweeping survey of sexuality in Europe from the ancient Greeks to the present, Desire: A History of European Sexuality follows changing attitudes to two major concepts of sexual desire—desire as dangerous, polluting, and disorderly, and desire as creative, transcendent, even revolutionary—through the major turning points of European history.

Chronological in structure, and wide ranging in scope, Desire addresses such topics as sex in ancient Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, sexual contact...