The year was 1972. Mores were in flux as youth cried, "Make love, not war," and a titillating book, filled with a smorgasbord of illustrations of sexual positions, made a sensational splash in bookstores across the country.

"The Joy of Sex" -- its name evoking the best-selling cookbook with gastronomical subtitles like "appetizers" and "main courses" and "sauces and pickles" -- took sex out of the porn shop and onto the bedside table, helping to fuel America's "Sexual Revolution."

The iconic cover featured a naked, bearded man pressing against his flower-child lover. And, in the tone of the times, author Dr. Alex Comfort -- a British gerontologist with anarchist leanings -- offered tips on the art of lovemaking to a mostly male, heterosexual audience.

But today, 36 years later, the bearded lothario is gone and, for the first time, a woman has completely rewritten the book in the style of Comfort, who died in 2000, keeping pace with scientific advances and new cultural attitudes.