The 375-page tome explores how women's undergarments have shaped their bodies while also reflecting social attitudes toward femininity and sexuality during the last two centuries.

Open-crotch drawers. Whale-bone corsets. Uplift bras. These and other intimate apparel get scholarly treatment in the book.

"I thought the best way to write about glamour was to write about something concrete. The first thing that popped into my head was lingerie."

As a graduate student at the University of Southern California, Fields wrote her doctoral dissertation on lingerie. And later at California State University, Fresno, where she has taught since 1999, she reworked the dissertation and added to it to produce her first book.

Acknowledging that some historians write books on war and politics, Fields calls herself a social historian who explores the lives of ordinary people, and she said she's particularly interested in women's history.

Fields' book takes readers on the intimate journey beginning in the 19th century when women wore breezy drawers. Long and loose-fitting underpants, designed with an open crotch, made it easier to answer nature's call when a woman was padded by pounds of petticoats and bound in a corset stiffened with whalebone.

The book offers similar historical and sociological takes on corsets, girdles, bras and black lingerie.

The latter became an erotic symbol in the 20th century, Fields says, because of three forces: white men's misperceptions that black women were overly sexual, popular culture linking sex and death, and the power of black clothing, originally a symbol of mourning.

Released in early July by University of California Press in both hardcover and paperback, "An Intimate Affair" already has been reviewed in the Washington Post and other publications. The Post reviewer wrote that the book "offers a rich and nuanced understanding of how pieces of every-day clothing reflect the changing historical context of women's lives ..."

The reviewer's one criticism: The book doesn't address "the changing cultural meanings of underwear in all aspects of popular culture since the 1950s."

The book's photos are historic and modest by today's racy standards _ a fact noted in a reader review posted at Amazon.com.

That review said readers looking for titillation should go elsewhere: "This work is scholarly and informative, but salaciousness or even mild stimulation is not its forte."

Fresno State student Suzanne Martinez said Friday that history always seems dull, but that she might read Fields' book.

"I do like to see how perceptions of women have developed over the years," said Martinez, a 19-year-old biology major from Fresno.

Fresno State student Jesus Mendoza, a Chicano-Latino studies major, said the title of the book misled him into thinking it was either a novel or a textbook for a sexuality course. But Mendoza, 30, of Fresno said he's interested in history and might read it anyway.

"It seems like it has to do with feminists," Mendoza said. "I like to see things from a different perspective."

Fields said her book can be used as a college textbook, and she plans to require it as one of nine or 10 textbooks in a graduate class she'll teach this fall at Fresno State. She said she's not expecting to make a lot of money from book sales, but using her book will give her students a different classroom experience.

Said Fields: "It's an opportunity to discuss the book with the author."