"Modernist Cuisine'of Sex Costs $2,750.

• Position: REPRODUCTION - Encyclopedia of Reproduction, 2d ed. - Book review

The practice of removing animals' testicles most likely started at the dawn of agriculture and the domestication of pigs, cattle, and sheep some 12,000 years ago. Assyrian tablets from 1500 B.C. note castration also was used as punishment for sexual crimes. Aristotle documented its effect on the voices of eunuchs, while he and others saw it affecting fertility, behavior, weight, metabolism, and more.

"This biological manipulation is the first documented physiological observation on the impacts of a specific organ on the biology of an organism," writes Washington State University biologist Michael Skinner.

These observations are among thousands in the second edition of the Encyclopedia of Reproduction, a magnum opus involving more than 1,000 authors, nearly 600 cross-referenced chapters, and edited by Skinner and eight associate editors. At 3,868 pages and a listed price of $2,750, it is the "Modernist Cuisine" of sex and among the heftiest compilations in the history of the field.

The first edition, published 20 years go, featured...