In "Fifty Shades of Grey," troubled romantic hero Christian Grey brings lovely ingenue Anastasia Steele into his playroom filled with handcuffs, paddles, whips, and other toys. She is stunned to learn he is a practitioner of BDSM--a secret he protects with nondisclosure agreements. Even by our societys standards, his tastes make him a sexual deviant of sorts. The popularity of Christian Grey is only a small part of why the narrow view of what is thought of as "normal" sex--a vanilla act performed by one man and one woman--is now contested. But as Julie Peakman reveals, normal never really existed; for everyone, different kinds of sex have always offered myriad pleasures, and almost all sexual behaviors have traveled between acceptance and proscription. "The Pleasures All Mine" examines two millennia of letters, diaries, court records, erotic books, medical texts, and more to explore the gamut of "deviant" sexual activity. Delving into the specialized cultures of pain, necrophilia, and bestiality and the social world of plushies, furries, and life-size sex dolls, Peakman considers the changing attitudes toward these, as well as masturbation, "golden showers," sadomasochism, homosexuals, transvestites, and transsexuals. She follows the history of each behavior through its original reception to its interpretation by sexologists and how it is viewed today, showing how previously acceptable behaviors now provoke social outrage, or vice versa.

In addition, she questions why people have been and remain intolerant of other peoples sexual preferences. The first comprehensive history of sexual perversion and packed with both color and black and white images, "The Pleasures All Mine" is a fascinating and sometimes shocking look at the evolution of our views on sex.