Power: The Ultimate Aphrodisiac.

• Author: Malanowski, Jamie
• Position: Political booknotes: naked ambition - Review

POWER: The Ultimate Aphrodisiac by Dr. Ruth Westheimer and Dr. Steven Kaplan Madison Books, $22.05 FOR THOSE TOO YOUNG TO remember, the prime of Dr. Ruth Westheimer, the tiny, genial Germanic psychosexual therapist occurred in the 1980s, when she rose to celebrity advocating the position that sex is good. How and why, after several millennia of nearly universal human copulation, this position came to be regarded as noteworthy would itself seem to be an appropriate subject for a book. Suffice it to say that with her pixieish charm and her seemingly unique ability to speak plainly about commonplace, everyday mammalian functions (a talent rendered apparently even more exotic by her grandmotherly age), she presented sex as something sweet and fun. This was a winning approach during a decade when, between cocaine, AIDS, movies like Fatal Attraction, and the grunt-filled grindings available on the newly opened home-video porn market, sex was generally seen as something dark and dangerous. Dr. Ruth was able to position herself as a name brand.

For name brands to exist, of course, they need to be affixed to products; otherwise, they go a-glimmering. Dr. Ruth's latest product is a book called Power: The Ultimate Aphrodisiac, written with Dr. Steven Kaplan, who teaches at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. They have collaborated before, though one can only speculate about their relative contributions; if it's any indication, Dr. Steve's name appears on the cover in a rather smaller typeface. The book is an eclectic survey of the stories of prominent political figures throughout human history, knit together with observations on the role that different mating habits had on the acquisition and exercise of power. Dr. Ruth meanders painlessly, but not captivatingly, through rulers, such as Jefferson, FDR, Cleopatra, Queen Elizabeth, and Catherine the Great, and extra-political elites, like Madame de Pompadour, Jackie Kennedy Onassis, and Yang Guifei, a concubine to an eighth-century Chinese emperor.

All this range is not the same thing as breadth, however; the studies seem like solitary billboards along a road in big, flat Kansas. If you don't know much about the people or circumstances she's writing about, this book may be most useful in inspiring you to seek out lengthier treatments. If you do know something about the people she writes about, you realize she has missed many details and subtleties, barely scratching the surface of some of her subjects...