NEW YORK - Wearing jeans, her hair pinned up in a tousled but stylish way, actress Kim Cattrall has heads turning as she walks through the Four Seasons Hotel.

Cattrall is here to talk about sex — not Sex and the City, the TV show that made her a household name, but Sexual Intelligence, her new book (Bulfinch, $30).

The subject matter is not new to Cattrall, 49, who wrote another book about sex — Satisfaction: The Art of the Female Orgasm — in 2002.

"Sexual Intelligence is almost like a prequel to Satisfaction," says Cattrall, who is a partner in Fertile Ground Productions, which produced the book and the documentary. Sexual Intelligence, she says, attempts to explain why and how men and women feel sexual desire and how world culture and nature influence our impulses and attitudes toward sex.

"We wanted to call it Sexual Intelligence because we wanted to bring intelligence to something that is shrouded in a lot of mystery," Cattrall says. "It's all the things we touched on and talked about in Sex and the City with a lot of humor and panache and style, but going deeper."

The full-color book includes photos of classic paintings and sculptures that celebrate the human body. Cattrall's role is that of a tour guide, setting the scene for discussions about sexual attraction, fantasies, taboos and physical chemistry.

"Instead of me being in any kind of role as an expert," she says, "we went about finding experts and everyday people courageous enough to talk about their desires and needs and then using nature, culture and history to highlight that."

"I feel like we're putting this warm light on it, this glow on it. Not a searchlight, which is too scary, and it's not a candle so you don't see clearly enough, but just a nice warm glow of sensuality and sexuality."

As for whether she believes Americans take sex too seriously or not seriously enough, she says with a laugh, "a little bit of both. Humor is a huge part of sex. It should not be left outside the bedroom.

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