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Eve

Eve

How The Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution

Summary

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Why do women live longer than men? Why do women have menopause? Why are women more likely to get Alzheimer's? Why do girls score better at every academic subject than boys until puberty, when suddenly their scores plummet? And does the female brain really exist?

In Eve, Cat Bohannon answers questions scientists should have been addressing for decades. With boundless curiosity and sharp wit, she covers the past 200 million years to explain the specific science behind the development of the female sex. Eve is not only a sweeping revision of human history, it's an urgent and necessary corrective for a world that has focused primarily on the male body for far too long. Bohannon's findings, including everything from the way C-sections in the industrialized world are rearranging women's pelvic shape to the surprising similarities between pus and breast milk, will completely change what you think you know about evolution and why Homo sapiens have become such a successful and dominant species, from tool use to city building to the development of language.

©2023 Cat Bohannon (P)2023 Penguin Audio

Reviews

  • A page-turning whistle-stop tour of mammalian development that begins in the Jurassic Era, Eve recasts the traditional story of evolutionary biology by placing women at its center . . . The book is engaging, playful, erudite, discursive and rich with detail
    New York Times

About the author

Cat Bohannon

Cat Bohannon is a researcher and author with a PhD from Columbia University in the evolution of narrative and cognition. Her essays and poems have appeared in Scientific American, Mind, Science Magazine, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Georgia Review, The Story Collider and Poets Against the War. She lives in the US with her partner and two offspring.
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