Virgin: The Untouched History

Virgin: The Untouched History by Blank, Hanne. hardcover edition. ISBN: 9781596910102.

Why has an indefinable state of being commanded the attention and fascination of the human race since the dawn of time? In Virgin, Hanne Blank brings us a revolutionary, rich and entertaining survey of an astonishing untouched history. From the simple task of determining what constitutes its loss to why it matters to us in the first place, Blank gets to the heart of why we even care about it in the first place. She tackles the reality of what we do and dont know about virginity and provides a sweeping tour of virgins in history―from virgin martyrs to Queen Elizabeth to billboards in downtown Baltimore telling young women its not a "dirty word." Virgin proves, as well, how utterly contemporary the topic is―the butt of innumerable jokes, center of spiritual mysteries, locus of teenage angst, popular genre for pornography and nucleus around which the worlds most powerful government has created an unprecedented abstinence policy. In this fascinating work, Hanne Blank shows for the first time why this is, and why everything we think we know about virginity is wrong.