Is Sex Necessary?

By E B White and James Thurber

A sparkling literary spoof first published in 1929, Is Sex Necessary? is a sly, subversive response to the surge of earnest psychoanalytic sex manuals that flooded the American market in the Jazz Age. With mock-scholarly flair and deadpan absurdity, James Thurber and E. B. White dismantle the anxieties, theories, and taboos of modern romance-one ridiculous diagram at a time.

This comedic collaboration marked the literary debut of both men, launching Thurber's career as America's master of neurotic whimsy and showcasing White's quiet genius for prose. Accompanied by Thurber's charmingly awkward line drawings, the book is a pitch-perfect send-up of both high-minded intellectualism and the fraught terrain of love and sex.

Wickedly smart and delightfully inappropriate, Is Sex Necessary? remains one of the great comic gems of American letters-an irreverent tonic for the overly serious and an affectionate jab at our deepest, silliest questions.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1684229979
• ISBN13: 9781684229970
• Release Date: August 2025
• Publisher: Martino Fine Books
• Length: 226 Pages
• Weight: 0.68 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"