Sometimes, you can judge a book by its cover. One look at the nude buffed male model on the cover of Michael Bronski's The Pleasure Principle: Sex, Backlash, and the Struggle for Gay Freedom--head down, hands dramatically spread to cover his genitals--and you'd expect something delicious and provocative. If, like me, you get your kicks from an intelligently argued treatise that combines discussions of cultural, social, and political phenomenon without getting mired in the doldrums of unreadable theory, then Bronski delivers on his cover's enticements.

The Pleasure Principle examines mainstream heterosexual America's refusal to grant full citizenship to gay and lesbian Americans, yet it focuses on the wider issue of the status quo's envy and fear of "pleasure," i.e. non-reproductive sexuality. Bronski is no neo-conservative arguing that gays and lesbians need to behave more like model heterosexuals to achieve equal rights. "Any movement for liberation or rights," Bronski states, "that does not include the acknowledgment of sexuality is going to fail." He uses the Gay Liberation Front slogan "We are your worst fear. We are your best fantasy" as a thematic refrain.

These ideas aren't new, though they have been underrepresented in this decade of Same-Sex Marriage and Don't Ask, Don't Tell. What makes The Pleasure Principle so fascinating is Bronski's entertaining and enlightening discussions of the supporting facts. Much of the book deals with popular culture as a form of pleasure and its role in providing "even in a commodified form...a public forum for examining the complexities of sexuality and gender." Bronksi encompasses a wide range of topics and pulls together an engrossing map of the relationship between mainstream culture and that of gays and lesbians.

One of the best things about The Pleasure Principle is Bronski's jargon-free writing style. He covers a lot of ground effortlessly--Bowers v. Hardwick, a history of men's clothing, ghettos and cultural assimilation, Pee Wee's Playhouse, the "gays as molesters" myth--and manages to intrigue and entertain on the way.

Bronski is particularly good in his comparison of three very different, yet oddly similar, ghettos-Venice's Jewish ghetto in the 1500s, Harlem in the 1920s, and Greenwich Village in the 1950s and 60s. He also does well with his examination of how marketing surveys gave right-wing groups the fuel they needed to pass anti-gay legislation in Colorado.

For a serious work of non-fiction, The Pleasure Principle is oddly fun and a great source for controversial statements guaranteed to liven up your next get-together. Try this: "'American' is a...mythic category whose parameters are set by tradition and bigotry." Or how about: "The eroticization of the male body over the past half century is a direct result of the influence of gay culture." Guaranteed to break the ice at parties.