There is a cliché in American culture that men are principally interested in sex, while women are mostly concerned with love. In helping to debunk this myth, Nancy Friday has performed an invaluable national service. She is one of the relatively small number of modern writers who has gathered and published evidence that women's fantasies are often as sexually explicit as men's. Her books devoted to relating women's sexual fantasies work effectively on several levels: as psychology, as sociology, and as pornography. In addition, Friday has produced several other important books on subjects of interest to modern women: jealousy, beauty, and the mother-daughter relationship.

Nancy Friday grew up in Charleston, South Carolina, the child of a single mother. She moved to New York City in the early 1960s, where she was simultaneously introduced to the sexual revolution and the women's movement, both of which...