© Columbia University Press
How Women Got Their Curves and Other Just-So Stories: Evolutionary Enigmas
Paper, 224 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-14665-4
$19.95
/ £13.95
April, 2009
Cloth, 224 pages,
ISBN: 978-0-231-14664-7
$29.95
/ £19.95
"A delightful, thought-provoking volume on perennial questions about female biology. " — Publishers Weekly
"David P. Barash and Judith Eve Lipton unabashedly demonstrate the pleasure of using evolutionary theory to help make sense of some puzzling aspects of the anatomy, physiology, and behavior of women. The authors' enthusiasm for their subjects and for the process of science is contagious. An excellent book. Refreshing in the extreme." — John Alcock, Arizona State University
"How Women Got Their Curves and Other Just-So Stories is a joyride of intellectual discovery. I felt as if I were at a dinner party with exceptionally knowledgeable and lively conversationalists whose creativity and intellectual detective work so totally engaged me that the hours passed like minutes. After only a few pages I wanted to play their game—the marshalling of evidence to see what combinations of data and scholarly pyrotechnics would solve such interesting mysteries as why women menstruate, why women's ovulation is hidden, and why female orgasm exists. The authors are admirably humble about their conclusions, and their logic is fascinating and convincing. How Women Got Their Curves and Other Just-So Stories deserves a big audience, and I salute the authors on creating an intellectually ambitious book that is as gripping as a novel. This is education that goes down so easy the reader may not notice. It is also full of provocative ideas and counterintuitive reasoning. Is this a groundbreaking, attention-gripping, intellectually brilliant, and paradigm-changing book? Unequivocally. It is all that, and more." — Pepper Schwartz, author of Prime: Adventures and Advice on Sex, Love, and the Sensual Years