Still: Everything science knows about sex that you never would have thought to ask. And then some.
A Lasker-winning science journalist's comprehensive—too comprehensive—survey of current research, discoveries, and theories about sex, genetics, and gender.
The ’90s gave us a glut of information on human sexuality and its origins, with the very latest coming from fields like molecular biology, evolutionary psychology, and neurobiology. New, controversial theories abound, and Rodgers (Psychosurgery, 1992, etc.) performs a much-needed service here in bringing them together. All the major perspectives appear, many of which will be familiar (Simon Levay on the brain's sexual dimorphism; John Money on gender assignment; Thornhill and Parker on rape), but Rodgers also includes many of what Stephen J. Gould derides as “just-so stories,” adaptionist theories based on meager research, leaving lots of loose ends in what might have been a more tightly knit work. But as interesting as the research itself are reports that scientists are still discouraged from sex research in humans, or extending their findings in other species to our own. If for only this reason, Rodgers’s work is valuable; there is so much inconclusive evidence of factors in our own behaviors (e.g., from bonobos and brain structure) that it can't all be dismissed. The author’s breezy style is largely unobtrusive, and if readers work their way through the drier sections on genetic molecular biology, there are scads of fascinating information: that women prefer the scent of symmetrical men, but only while ovulating; that the more power women have in society, the thinner the ideal female; that faking orgasms might be an inherited skill that, along with the real thing, help women “decide” when to get pregnant. Professionals may be dismayed at the prominence the controversial Johns Hopkins professor John Money is accorded here, and Rodgers’s job doing p.r. for Johns Hopkins is not particularly reassuring.
Still: Everything science knows about sex that you never would have thought to ask. And then some.Pub Date: Jan. 15, 2002
ISBN: 0-7167-3744-2
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 15, 2001
Jahren transcends both memoir and science writing in this literary fusion of both genres.
Award-winning scientist Jahren (Geology and Geophysics/Univ. of Hawaii) delivers a personal memoir and a paean to the natural world.
The author’s father was a physics and earth science teacher who encouraged her play in the laboratory, and her mother was a student of English literature who nurtured her love of reading. Both of these early influences engrossingly combine in this adroit story of a dedication to science. Jahren’s journey from struggling student to struggling scientist has the narrative tension of a novel and characters she imbues with real depth. The heroes in this tale are the plants that the author studies, and throughout, she employs her facility with words to engage her readers. We learn much along the way—e.g., how the willow tree clones itself, the courage of a seed’s first root, the symbiotic relationship between trees and fungi, and the airborne signals used by trees in their ongoing war against insects. Trees are of key interest to Jahren, and at times she waxes poetic: “Each beginning is the end of a waiting. We are each given exactly one chance to be. Each of us is both impossible and inevitable. Every replete tree was first a seed that waited.” The author draws many parallels between her subjects and herself. This is her story, after all, and we are engaged beyond expectation as she relates her struggle in building and running laboratory after laboratory at the universities that have employed her. Present throughout is her lab partner, a disaffected genius named Bill, whom she recruited when she was a graduate student at Berkeley and with whom she’s worked ever since. The author’s tenacity, hope, and gratitude are all evident as she and Bill chase the sweetness of discovery in the face of the harsh economic realities of the research scientist.
Jahren transcends both memoir and science writing in this literary fusion of both genres.Pub Date: April 5, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-101-87493-6
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
As much a work of philosophy as of physics and full of insights for readers willing to work hard.
Undeterred by a subject difficult to pin down, Italian theoretical physicist Rovelli (Reality Is Not What It Seems: The Journey to Quantum Gravity, 2017, etc.) explains his thoughts on time.
Other scientists have written primers on the concept of time for a general audience, but Rovelli, who also wrote the bestseller Seven Brief Lessons on Physics, adds his personal musings, which are astute and rewarding but do not make for an easy read. “We conventionally think of time,” he writes, “as something simple and fundamental that flows uniformly, independently from everything else, uniformly from the past to the future, measured by clocks and watches. In the course of time, the events of the universe succeed each other in an orderly way: pasts, presents, futures. The past is fixed, the future open….And yet all of this has turned out to be false.” Rovelli returns again and again to the ideas of three legendary men. Aristotle wrote that things change continually. What we call “time” is the measurement of that change. If nothing changed, time would not exist. Newton disagreed. While admitting the existence of a time that measures events, he insisted that there is an absolute “true time” that passes relentlessly. If the universe froze, time would roll on. To laymen, this may seem like common sense, but most philosophers are not convinced. Einstein asserted that both are right. Aristotle correctly explained that time flows in relation to something else. Educated laymen know that clocks register different times when they move or experience gravity. Newton’s absolute exists, but as a special case in Einstein’s curved space-time. According to Rovelli, our notion of time dissolves as our knowledge grows; complex features swell and then retreat and perhaps vanish entirely. Furthermore, equations describing many fundamental physical phenomena don’t require time.
As much a work of philosophy as of physics and full of insights for readers willing to work hard.Pub Date: May 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-7352-1610-5
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: April 2, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
