Book review: Psychedelic Sex - homage to '60s softcore porn

Wily American pornographers sniffed an opportunity in the late 1960s when the flower-power children of the counterculture revolution, liberated by the Pill, penicillin and LSD, shed their clothing along with their inhibitions.

The era of free love spawned scores of softcore porn magazines, with saucy names such as Nude Rebels, Naked Nomads, Fling, Groovers and Tempty. University students were more than willing to flash their flesh for kicks in these pages, which portrayed a swinging hippie fantasy life "where all was groovy and nooky was loose and free", Eric Godtland writes in Taschen's Psychedelic Sex, which pays homage to some of these titles.

Packed with page and cover samples from the carefree years of 1967 to 1972, the book contains more shots of open-legged young women than you can shake a meat stick at. There is simulated sex, groping and suggestive tongue popping. Yet shameless, smiling faces betray an innocence lost in today's multibillion-dollar hardcore porn industry.

Psychedelic Sex could be described as coffee table porn. It is also a tribute to psychedelic art, with its vivid, clashing colours and experimental graphics. Models were daubed in body paint, bathed in disco lights, and draped in beads or balloons.

With its vivid lime green and purple zig-zag cover, the book is beautifully presented. Its modern design uses bright, clashing colours that tastefully complement the era's radiant palette without being jarring.