Amazon.com (ISBN 0062515918, Paperback)

In previous books such as The Sexual State of the Union, Susie Bright has told us about the way things are, and while she continues that mission in Full Exposure, she also presents an inspiring vision of the way things could be. This is far more than a self-help book; it's a blueprint for cultural revolution, focused on the liberation of our erotic expression and, as she puts it, "the creativity it demands, the challenges of sexual candor, and the rewards of coming clean about desire." The personal is always political, goes the adage, but whether she's making readers smile with a reminiscence of her first orgasm (during a fantasy in which she imagined herself as Barbara "Agent 99" Feldon) or evoking our concern over a bomb threat at one of her college lectures, Bright reminds us that the personal is always personal as well. Along the way, she tears down the false barriers between porn and erotica, counsels parents on how to negotiate the line between sexual honesty with their children and mutual privacy, and shows us again and again that gender and desire are never as simplistic as moral and cultural watchdogs would have us believe. "Girls can be women with real sexual appetites," she writes. "Men can be love-bunnies and still have raging hard-ons." Bright also includes a 17-step "sexual manifesto" aimed at enabling readers to reclaim their erotic identities and express desire on their own terms. Very few people are writing about sexuality as honestly and as well as Susie Bright--if you care at all about the subject, you owe it to yourself to read Full Exposure. --Ron Hogan