The Kama Sutra has a huge reputation based on only one of its five sections. The positions would be Part 2 and only one chapter of the ten in that section. Most books with Kama Sutra in the title are just going to be some porn structured around that chapter. The entire book is not so much useful in describing the physics of sex as for describing the psychology of sex. (It is good for physical stuff too. At one point it gives a method to get to the G-spot with the fingers, so I have to give Indian medicine props there.)

The five sections are as follows:
Part 1 - Describes how to be attractive. You should bathe before you will be meeting the opposite sex and do something to get your breath smelling better. Also clean your apartment. People call it ritual, but it is excellent advice on not being a slob. For women it gives a listing of the 64 arts which will let you be the favorite in the harem. They are fun. Who wouldn't love a woman who does yoga, can inlay a marble table and knows how to design and build irrigation systems? Much more fun to try to be than the Proverbs 31 woman, but on the other hand kind of a strange laundry list of talents.
Part 2 - The positions, hugging, kissing, scratching and oral. Size of the man and the woman and which positions are better to even thing out in that regard.
Part 3 - How to negotiate an arranged marriage (not so useful now). How to devirginize your bride. You won't be sexing her until about two weeks into the marriage. Its all about gaining her trust and her being comfortable so she won't have hang ups about men, and sadly it doesn't apply to most marriages or devirginizations today.
Part 4 - Handling your harem. How the harem women should treat one another and how to keep them one big happy family.
Part 5 - Other men's wives/concubines and how to sneak around with them.
Part 6 - Courtesans. Kind of like etiquette for prostitutes, except courtesans aren't prostitutes. For example there is some etiquette on how to handle the courtesan living with you and your wives.
Part 7 - Being a hottie. How to make some aprodisiacs and some nice little tricks. This section is probably better advice for the sex life than the positions in that the anatomy is here.

I highly recommend the Kama Sutra but not to people who are looking for the book by reputation as sex sex sex. The book is very much about sex, but more about the whole world of etiquette surrounding male female relations. Virgin marriages (virgin women anyway) are taken for granted and one whole section is about devirginizing the woman AFTER THE MARRIAGE. The advice is very good because it tells how to go about building relationships not how to have one night stands.

Get this book to study and think about and view it as relationship advice and not physical sex advice. So much of the book is about communication and is dead on that it is no wonder it is a classic and likewise shows how important communication is to good sex. In terms of this specific translation, just go for a modern translation of the whole book. The Richard Burton translation is very stilted. He calls the section on oral sex "On holding the lingam in the mouth" So you will be doing a bit of translating of your own as you read prim Victorian descriptions of acts that the Victorians were unlikely to ever mention around company. It seems that the Alain Dani?lou translation is good, but I have not read that specific one.

This is a great conversion into Microsoft Reader format of the classic translation by Richard Burton (No no not the one that was married to Elizabeth Taylor, the one that was married to Isabel Arundell!). Although some people think of the Kama Sutra as a catalog of "positions" it's much more than that - a substantial guide and commentary to human sexuality/sensuality. The publisher takes advantage of all the features that make Microsoft Reader the premier ebook reader program. Clicking any item on the Contents page jumps you to that chapter. Clicking on a footnote in the text jumps you to that footnote - and clicking on the footnote number from there returns you to the text.

The work itself sometimes states the obvious, "Now good looks, good qualities, youth, and liberality are the chief and most natural means of making a person agreeable in the eyes of others," which is no help to craggly, old, broke guy like me. On the other hand, I have to agree completely with Burton's observation that, "It is a work that should be studied by all, both old and young; the former will find in it real truths, gathered by experience, and already tested by themselves, while the latter will derive the great advantage of learning things, which some perhaps may otherwise never learn at all, or which they may only learn when it is too late."

There are no illustrations in this version - no need for them, in my opinion. This isn't supposed to be an aid for...uh...self titillation. Besides, illos would have just increased the download time. 5 stars.