Eve : How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution Hardcover Hardcover

Super smart, but easy to read, Eve is one of the best books I’ve read in a while. It takes a long view of evolution through the history of women—childbirth, sex, aging, relationships—they’re all examined and explained by someone who’s not just a smart scientist but a really, really good writer. I heard Cat Bohannon on Freakanomics Radio, and after listening to her talk about evolution and history and turning down an offer to be a high paid sex worker, I knew I needed to read this book. It was worth every penny. Even the footnotes (especially the footnotes) are funny and insightful. It’s a long read, but never feels slow or boring.

If you'd like to learn about the evolution of women, why we are like we are. Why we have what we have. How is influences medically our treatment and non treatment. And be blown away, truly, I can't recommend enough. I've purchased for many friends. We will have a discussion group on it. I'm reading for second time to have it sink in even more. There are hardly any, really almost no books about women. This stands alone. Get it, discuss it, give as gifts to friends, daughters, nieces. Read every single footnote. Everyone!! I hope she follows up with more on women and it encourages more to write about us and our history. Every woman should buy this. It should be number one on the best seller list. Number one. Come on women. Invest in knowing YOURSELF.

The book has a wealth of interesting information as well as theories. Bohannon has an appealing, informal, occasionally even sassy style. At the same time, she is a scientist, and is quick to use qualifiers to distinguish fact from theory. Facts may be based on journal articles, and as she recognizes, some of these are subject to future challenge. In developing theories, Bohannon looks to human physiology, anthropology, evolution, the animal world - and logic. I underline passages in my Kindle, and in reviewing my notes, I did see certain subjects appear in widely separated pages, and occasionally the material is inconsistent, which does make me question the book’s organization to some extent. For readers who especially enjoyed the way Bohannon brings to life some of our very distant ancestors, they might like to read “The Last Days of the Dinosaurs” by Riley Black. Why menopause? Bohannon’s answer is that a female does not develop new egg follicles after birth, and loses some each year; yet she now often lives longer than the follicles last. Chimpanzees in captivity, with extended life, can outlive their follicles. Animals, like some whales, can reach menopause. Is there an evolutionary advantage to this? Menopausal whales do not spend more time taking care of grandchildren, etc. In the face of the volatile climate in which hominins evolved, relatively quick changes in average yearly temperatures/precipitation, a long memory provided by the menopausal may prove very useful indeed to a group’s survival. Bohannon cites physiological facts for why females tend to live longer, once they survive childbirth at least, and this is true of other species. “The male cardiovascular system is more prone to higher blood pressure from an early age.” “Male brains seem to suffer more extensive inflammation and lesions around injury sites than females’ do”- “and this might be because progesterone and the estrogens—the classic female sex hormones—have a protective effect on brain tissue, dampening that inflammatory response. “ Childbirth was very dangerous even for our Habilis hominin ancestors, even more because of the wider shoulders than the bigger head of the newborn. Learning about plants with pharmaceutical benefits helped, but help from other women in giving birth was important in aiding group longer term survival. The long time babies were so dependent may have helped lead to monogamy to enlist father’s help, but once male parenthood was (relatively) certain, it was possible for prestige to be inherited thru males, and coalition of males might form to protect their status. Surprising to me, Bohannon notes that Islam at its inception treated women more as equals. “The slow decline of that civilization also happened to start when Islam absorbed Byzantium and became more influenced by Western thought, including the increased seclusion of women and girls, so popular in Persia, and the de-emphasis of the importance of education and worldliness”.

i was trained as a biologist, so much of this was review.the author ties it all together in a logical believable form.terms are explained well. 'techno jargon' is kept to a minimum.(more scientists could benefit from using 'normal English' and stop trying to impress colleagues.i am recommending this book to anyone who wants to know how we ended up this way.

Bohannon has done a lively, irrevent, and widely researched summary of how people got to be who we are today - because face it, everyone was given birth by a woman. Special focus on the features that make her a woman makes for a fascinating story. Set of stories, actually. Humans evolved from skittering early mammals, but not in a single step. Things like live birth, lacatation, and big brains were added to the body plan at different times separated by millions of years. Each early ancestor that contributed a given feature (as near as we can tell) appears as a separate Eve.Although the subject is serious, deadly serious at times, Bohannon preserves her sense of humor. This could be taken as disrespectful of women, except that Bohannon pointedly includes her own relevant experiences in the same kind of banter. It's not the tone you typically hear in scholarly writing. And, given something around a thousand references in the bibliography, I think "scholarship" fits. That averages just over two references for each of the main text's 430+ pages. Then there are over fifty pages of end-notes, in addition to numerous footnotes. (If I had noticed the end-notes sooner, I would have read this with two bookmarks.)A well organized and very readable book on a very important subject. Too, the author's pervasive use of "she" and "her" to discuss the creatures of the fossil record, it decisively moves away from the male-by-default assumption baked into so much of the writing on our distant ancestors.-- wiredweird

The introduction is gripping. The book is “science-heavy”, if that doesn’t typically interest you, hang with it, there is humor & fascinating facts. It is a book about the marvel of the female body, but ultimately, about the best way to sustain a happy healthy humanity. Loved it.

Well researched study of the evolution of the the female body.

Must read for everyone

A great book, gives a lot of information regarding female evolution but in a very engaging and witty style. I realised how little I knew about the origins of my own body. I liked the way the author pulls together current research in different fields, to give a much broader view. I felt alot more positive and proud to have a female body.

From the very beginning; informative, easy language, fun to read … a long story

From the first page I was engaged ! It is a dense read but accessible and packed with interesting questions, analysis and factual information. I can highly recommend this book if you want to learn more about female evolution from a scientific perspective.

I bought a copy for every adult woman in my family I hope they get as much information out of this book as I did.