He writes that his aim is to "provide an entertaining, informative, and perhaps occasionally even shocking popular historical overview of all that has happened in the wide world of human sexuality in the last thirty or so years, with particular emphasis on its epicenter, the United States."

[11] The book was also reviewed by Donna Seaman in Booklist,[12] the political commentator Mark Steyn in The Wall Street Journal,[13] the critic Liesl Schillinger in The Washington Post,[14] the journalist Will Hermes in Utne Reader,[15] and the political scientist Jean Bethke Elshtain in The Times Literary Supplement,[16] and discussed by Janny Scott in The New York Times,[17] Jeff Garigliano in Folio,[18] and the journalist Scott Stossel in The American Prospect.

"[6] Abramobich described the book as interesting and credited Heidenry with showing that, "sex, just like everything else human, is a muddle--both tonic and poison, self-fulfilling and self-destructive, transcendent and mundane, stunning and boring.

He commented that an important aspect of Heidenry's method was that it affirmed the value of journals such as Forum, Penthouse, Hustler, and Screw, writing that without his attention to them, "this material might have been lost to history."

She maintained that his real interest was pornography, and that he neglected other topics; she described his chapter on homosexuality as "a dry twenty-page civil rights discussion", and also accused him of giving insufficient attention to women.

However, she criticized him for focusing almost exclusively on the United States, for relying on "urban legends and the self-promoting inflations of prosecutors and propagandists" in his estimates of the profits of the pornography industry, for failing to fully discuss scandals involving right-wing organizations, and for ignoring the "sex wars" within feminism.

According to Scott, while Nobile wanted Simon & Schuster to recall What Wild Ecstasy, it declined to do so, arguing that the parallels consisted only of "purely factual" statements "available for all writers to use", although it did offer "to change future printings, crediting four articles Mr. Heidenry left out of his sources list."