MUDDLING THROUGH THE SEXUAL REVOLUTION

A travel writer offers a decadeslong look at his sexual history with women—many of them.

Podell’s first two works, Who Needs a Road? (2010) and Around the World in 50 Years (2015), are both travel books, and, in a sense, his latest one is, too. The author takes readers on a breezy tour of his sexual adventures, from losing his virginity at age 21 to the many trysts that occurred during the next six decades. Perhaps not surprisingly, Podell considers Hugh Hefner a role model, and he readily admits his years at Playboy as a 20-something staffer shaped his sex life: “It was an experience that could easily make a guy a confirmed womanizer for life. And did.” The author, who also worked in advertising and law, doesn’t appear to hold back much when it comes to his dating accounts, regaling readers with sometimes explicit stories about his worldwide sexploits in easily digestible chapters. There’s an architect, a sous chef, a CEO’s secretary, a flight attendant, a friend’s fiancee (at their request), an actor with a pet cheetah, another flight attendant, and many others, including the 25 women he slept with one January. One chapter outlines Podell’s “Rules of Engagement,” which include being honest, never forcing anything on anyone, and being attentive, and the author indeed comes off as respectful and admiring rather than lecherous and despicable. He’s often funny, such as this observation when he neared his 22nd birthday, still a virgin: “I felt like the job applicant who knows that there are many openings out there for which he’d fit perfectly, but can’t get the position without prior experience, none of which I had.” Podell has dated a lot of women, had several careers, and lived through the sexual revolution, women’s liberation, the Vietnam War, and other seminal eras, and he skillfully writes about all of this. As he puts it, “This book is about social history, plus sex and lust, not love, which are ultimately different, although often confused, sometimes conflated, and occasionally combined.”

An engaging romp detailing one man’s devotion to womanizing.