This award-winning book "offers a thorough compilation of what modern science, from biomechanics to neurochemistry, knows about the secrets of orgasm" ( Publishers Weekly). The coauthor of the international best-selling book The G Spot and Other Discoveries about Human Sexuality, Beverly Whipple joins neuroscientist Barry R. Komisaruk and endocrinologist Carlos Beyer-Flores to view orgasm through the lenses of behavioral neuroscience along with cognitive and physiological sciences. Covering every type of sexual peak experience in women and men from intense to phantom, this fascinating and comprehensive work illuminates the hows, whats, and wherefores of orgasm. The authors explain how and why orgasms happen, why they fail to happen, and what brain and body events are put into play at the moment of orgasm. They also describes the genital-brain connection, how the brain produces orgasms, how aging affects orgasm, and the effects of prescription medication, street drugs, hormones, disorders, and diseases. Winner of the 2007 Bonnie and Vern L. Bullough Book Award, given by the Foundation for the Scientific Study of Sexuality