Library Journal calls Michael Castleman “one of the nation’s leading health writers.” For more than 30 years, he has been a prolific health writer who specializes in sexuality.
In 1976, Castleman was a founder of the nation’s first birth control clinic for men, a project of the San Francisco Health Department. Years before AIDS made condoms a household word, the Men’s Clinic distributed thousands for free, and also taught men about the other contraceptives. With training from the Human Sexuality Program at the University of California, San Francisco, Medical Center, Castleman also provided brief sex counseling for men, mostly helping young men learn ejaculatory control.
Castleman’s sex counseling led to his first book, Sexual Solutions: For Men and the Women Who Love Them (Simon & Schuster, 1980), which encourages men to make love the way women prefer, with an emphasis on whole-body sensuality. Sexual Solutions sold more than 500,000 copies and remained in print for 22 years, a rare achievement for any book.
Sexual Solutions impressed the editor of the Playboy Advisor column. From 1991 to 1995, Castleman answered all the sex questions submitted to Playboy.
In 2004, Castleman published Great Sex: The Man’s Guide to the Secrets of Whole-Body Sensuality (Rodale). In it, he argues that pornography, men’s leading sex educator, teaches lovemaking all wrong. Porn is totally preoccupied with the genitals, while great sex is the result of leisurely, playful, massage-based, whole-body sensuality.
Currently, Castleman is the publisher of GreatSexAfter40.com. He answers sex questions for free from people of all ages, though the emphasis is on lovemaking in the second half of life. The site also contains a library of 88 articles on all aspects of sexuality. Articles cost $1.99. Buyers get PDFs delivered to their email.
Twice nominated for National Magazine Awards, Castleman has written about sexuality and health for an enormous number of publications, among them: the New York Times, Reader’s Digest, Family Circle, Redbook, Self, Glamour, Cosmopolitan, Good Housekeeping, Ladies’ Home Journal, Men’s Health, Men’s Fitness, Men’s Journal, Psychology Today, Natural Health, and WebMD.
In addition to Sexual Solutions and Great Sex, Castleman is the author of 10 consumer health books, most recently, The New Healing Herbs (Rodale, 2010) about herbal medicine, and Building Bone Vitality (McGraw-Hill), which cites 1,200 studies to make the case that for bone health, calcium is not as important as a diet rich in fruits and vegetables. Castleman’s books have a combined total of more than 2.2 million copies in print.
Finally, Castleman writes a mystery series set in San Francisco. Books include The Lost Gold of San Francisco, Death Caps, and A Killing in Real Estate (2010). Check them out on Amazon.com or mcastleman.com.
Castleman, a Phi Beta Kappa graduate of the University of Michigan (1972), earned an M.A. in journalism from the University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Journalism (1979). He lives in San Francisco with his wife, a family physician. They have two adult children. Visit GreatSexAfter40.com.