The Other Side of Desire: Four Journeys into the Far Realms of Lust and Longing

"Girded with scientific data about the nature of sexual identity . . . a foray into extreme passion, in quest of the human soul." -O, The Oprah Magazine

How do we come to be who we are sexually? How do we cope with the forces of desire? How can we understand the relationship between the transcendent and the physical, between the wish for love and the anarchy of the erotic?

Daniel Bergner looks for answers in the stories of four people whose longings may be very different from our own: a devot...