A spirited account of how hormones influence gender differences and sexual behaviors, along with advice on how to take control of these potent biochemical forces. A physician and sex therapist trained at the Masters and Johnson Institute, Crenshaw (Bedside Manners, 1983, etc.) is one teacher who knows how to make her chemistry lessons painless. She introduces the major players in colorful language: Estrogen is Marilyn Monroe, testosterone is the young Marlon Brando, serotonin is the resident schizophrenic. After a brief look at the sexual stages in the lives of men and women, she examines the role of hormones and other chemicals in shaping romantic feelings and actions. Many chapters open with an attention-grabbing sexual scenario, and numerous other explicit passages are interspersed throughout the text. A dozen or so sex-shaping substances are profiled, with charts providing a summary of each one's characteristics, functions, therapeutic uses, and the factors that raise or lower its level in the body. One of Crenshaw's key messages is that, thanks to the variations in the mix of this chemical brew coursing through their bloodstreams, men and women are different—biologically, sexually, and emotionally. Her other message is that, as human beings, we need not be the slaves of our chemistry. A sizable portion of the book is devoted to menopause and its male version, viropause, which she views as endocrine disorders to be treated by hormone replacement therapy whenever possible. Ever optimistic, Crenshaw concludes with some speculations based on current hormone research with animals. If she's right, there's a brave new world ahead, of longevity and sexual fitness for those who mind their chemistry lessons. Uninhibited, upbeat, and opinionated. (First serial to Cosmopolitan and Fitness; Book-of-the-Month Club alternate selection; author tour)
Pub Date: March 19, 1996
ISBN: 0-399-14041-7
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Putnam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 1996
It is tautological that we'll never know the unknowable, but it seems we can see the invisible—thanks to the scanning electron microscope (SEM). Magnified hundreds, even thousands, of times, the tiniest particles appear in surprising splendor, while objects and materials we thought we knew—Velcro, nylon—become unrecognizable when reduced to their micro-components. These astonishing, mostly black-and-white images are abstract dramas of light and shade. Textures change with the degree of magnification: The delicate filigreed threads of a goose feather magnified x20 become bamboo stalks at x635. Latex's strength is visibly apparent: Its little fuzzballs seem impenetrable in tightly symmetrical military array; nylon, on the other hand, is a flabby, disorganized tangle of spaghetti-like strings (oh, if only they could make stockings out of latex). The strange ``landscapes'' and ``portraits'' gathered by SEM expert Breger seem to take one out of this world rather than more deeply into it. But toward the end, Breger brings us back to mundane reality—with a darling close-up of every urban dweller's friend, the cockroach. (First serial to New York Times Magazine)
Pub Date: Nov. 20, 1995
ISBN: 0-231-08252-5
Page Count: 201
Publisher: Columbia Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
Two years in the life of a pair of captive bottle-nosed dolphins, yeomanly conveyed in the popular-science mode, with a halo of hard science. Back in 1988, Howard and her marine-biology cohorts went forth and kidnapped a couple of dolphins from Tampa Bay. From there they were flown to Santa Cruz to be put under heavy scrutiny. Here is the chronicle of the two years the dolphins were kept in California and the unprecedented follow-up after release, which reads like well-fleshed-out field notes, sometimes too well fleshed out: ``The Ryder truck backed into the fenced compound . . . The crew . . . removed the transporters from the truck by forklift.'' Much of the book is given over to the daily life of such a study: the getting- to-know-you period, the first attempts at communication, the training sessions, (the dolphins may well think they're training the trainers, Howard observes), the gathering of data; it adds up to a light-handed evocation of the meat-and-potatoes of research. Howard also rolls out the pure science artillery, with long disquisitions on echolocation (which allows dolphins to paint a picture of their surroundings) and the notions of flexibility and complexity in intelligence. Just when all the (admittedly fascinating) cetacean theory is about to make the reader's mind melt, Howard smartly steps in with a note of humor, e.g., when one of her charges made a ``fart-type noise . . . the dolphins stopped what they were doing and stared at him.'' Sophomoric, perhaps, but nonetheless a relief. Dolphins may be directly related to cows and hippopotami, but in Howard's hands they emerge as pleasingly idiosyncratic, foible- ridden beasts, touched with ``a spark of the divine.'' (8 pages color photos, not seen)
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1996
ISBN: 0-553-37778-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Bantam
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 1995
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