Graphic, no-nonsense scenarios of human sexual behavior, and evolutionary biology as the framework for interpreting who did what to whom in a given scenario, are the hallmark of this extraordinary work by Univ. of Manchester (England) biologist Baker. His thesis? That humans, no more or less than other animals, are driven by biological forces to ensure their genetic survival. Males need to ensure it is their genes that inseminate; females that they get impregnated by the best genes available. Does that sound like sexual warfare? Game theory? You bet. Baker's credentials are based on lifelong animal research combined with studies of 100 English couples willing to be interviewed and observed in the act. In a nutshell, Baker opines that women are masters at concealing their fertility, men at promoting sperm warfare. The latter relates to evidence that in the face of deposits of sperm from two or more partners in a women's genital tract, there is competition in which one contender's sperm ``blockers'' and ``killers'' try to outdo the other's to succeed in fertilizing the ovum. In 37 fictional scenarios of sexual activity Baker plays out variations on this theme from routine marital sex to homosexuality, group sex, wife-battering, and marital rape, and lifelong monogamy—coming to startling conclusions that infidelity, masturbation, bisexuality, even rape may pay off in the survival- of-the-fittest-genes game. Baker is well aware that he has written a controversial book that will inflame many readers. To his credit, his sexual scenarios are coolly descriptive rather than prurient, as are informative passages on anatomy, the menstrual cycle, and other aspects of physiology. All the same, in reducing complex human behavior to biological urges, he omits emotional motivations and forces. To the question, ``What has love got to do with it?'' Baker would say, ``Not much.'' Expect fireworks and rebuttals, but also serious consideration for the ideas expressed by someone bold enough to open the bedroom door.
Pub Date: Oct. 23, 1996
ISBN: 0-465-08179-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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