Sarah Blaffer Hrdy is Professor Emerita of Anthropology at the University of California, Davis.
This is a splendid book. It is a scientific treatise on primate sex
and status, successfully masquerading as a good read.
*American Scientist*
The bulk of the book represents an attempt to create a perspective
on the evolutionary biology of women by evaluating their female
primate heritage. These chapters are original, high quality
formulations presenting and explaining the behavior of female
primates using a combination of sociobiological and socioecological
principles of analysis...The book is written toward a borderline
between the scientific and the popular audience--not an easy thing
to do--but, by and large, Hrdy does just that. For this reason, the
book has a place in both research and teaching.
*American Journal of Physical Anthropology*
It is an understatement to say that this is a provocative essay.
Although the book is written for a general audience, it will compel
specialists to reconsider many of their assumptions about the
evolution of primate females. Those interested in evolutionary
influences upon human social behavior will be stimulated and
challenged. Undoubtedly, many of the hypotheses will be
controversial, and some may be disturbing.
*Ethnology and Sociology*
In its treatment of primate behavior, Hrdy's book has no
peers...[It is] a fascinating account of the selective pressures
that have shaped the behavior of males and females.
*Science*
[A] breakthrough book...A primatologist by training and feminist by
predilection, Hrdy asked the basic and in my mind perfectly
sensible question: How do women compare to other female primates?
What can we understand about our urges, desires, and fears, our
sexuality, our relationships with men and with other women, and the
near universality of women's second-class status, by examining the
lives and loves of our closest nonhuman kin? Among Hrdy's many
bracing conclusions: Far from being coy and sexually tepid, as the
stereotype has it, women may well have evolved for a restless sort
of promiscuity, the better to confuse issues of paternity and thus
heighten their children's chances of survival in the hazardous,
half-cocked company of men.
*O Magazine*
Ask a Question About this Product More... |