Adventures in the Orgasmatron: How the Sexual Revolution Came to America

Well before the 1960s, a sexual revolution was under way in America, led by expatriated European thinkers who saw a vast country ripe for liberation. In "Adventures in the Orgasmatron," Christopher Turner tells the revolution's story--an illuminating, thrilling, often bizarre story of sex and science, ecstasy and repression.

Central to the narrative is the orgone box--a tall, slender construction of wood, metal, and steel wool. A person who sat in the box, it was thought, could elevate his or her "orgastic potential." The box was the invention of Wilhelm Reich, an outrider psychoanalyst who faced a federal ban on the orgone box, an FBI investigation, a fraught encounter with Einstein, and bouts of paranoia.

In Turner's vivid account, Reich's efforts anticipated those of Alfred Kinsey, Herbert Marcuse, and other prominent thinkers--efforts that brought about a transformation of Western views of sexuality in ways even the thinkers themselves could not have imagined.