Review by Booklist Review
"Female bodies aren't just male bodies with 'extra stuff' (fat, breasts, uteri)," Bohannon writes. She employs evolutionary biology, gynecology, and paleoanthropology in constructing this history of how the female Homo sapiens body became the marvel it currently is. Nudged along by evolution to become remarkably resilient and amazingly adaptable, women have a compelling case for being the stronger sex. Bohannon's coverage of the science of sex differences, male bias in research studies, and the fact that not all drugs are sex "neutral" make for rousing reading. The discussion moves through conception and birth, childhood and puberty, motherhood and menopause. Love, mating, the brain, perception, language, the musculoskeletal system, and sexism are addressed. The chapter "Milk," dispenses fascinating details about human breast milk, a substance that is nearly 90 percent water but additionally provides nutrition and immunity to nursing babies. "Womb" is another standout chapter with its reporting on the muscular strength of the uterus, function of the placenta, and physiology of menstrual periods. Eve is an enlightening examination of the evolution of the female body, an ode to its remarkable design, intricacies, and capabilities.
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
Cognition researcher Bohannon's ambitious debut "traces the evolution of women's bodies, from tits to toes." She explains that milk production likely evolved around 205 million years ago from the "moistening mucus" that rodent-like pre-mammals coated their eggs with, and that the antecedent to human wombs first developed 65 million years ago in a "weasel-squirrel" whose legs lifted it high enough off the ground to accommodate carrying "a swollen uterus." Comparisons with other species enlighten, as when Bohannon contends that because humans didn't evolve to have "trapdoor" vaginas--such as those of mallards, who can redirect sperm from unwanted partners away from the ovaries--it's likely "ancient hominins just weren't all that rapey." Bohannon offers a bracing corrective to male-centric evolutionary accounts, arguing that female hominins were likely on two legs before their male counterparts because they needed to provide more food for their offspring and so benefitted more from being able to carry large quantities of stuff in their arms, and she balances scientific rigor with entertaining prose ("The truth is we should have more vaginas," she writes, explaining how the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs significantly depleted the planet's marsupial population, most of which have between two and four vaginas). It's an illuminating and fresh take on how human evolution unfolded. (Oct.)
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Review by Kirkus Book Review
A capacious investigation of women throughout time. Bohannon, who holds a doctorate in the study of the evolution of narrative and cognition, makes an engaging book debut with a sweeping history of the development of women's bodies over the past 200 million years. Calling evolution "a complicated narrative, with a lot of whimsy and accident," the author creates a jaunty, digressive, and often whimsical tale examining the origins of some defining features of womanhood: the ability to produce milk; gestate offspring in the womb; facilitate childbirth; experience menopause, which remains "one of the biggest mysteries in modern biology"; and forge "distinctive, complex, bizarre, and overpowering love bonds." Bohannon considers how bipedalism, the use of tools, increased brain size, and language related particularly to females. Mammalian milk, she notes, originated more than 200 million years ago in a mammal the size of a field mouse. Placental mammals evolved 67 million to 63 million years ago, this time in a squirrel-like creature, the first to grow eggs inside her body, rather than drop them in a nest. Changes in seeing and hearing resulted from the development of primates, 66 million to 63 million years ago. "Primate Eves" lived in tree canopies for tens of millions of years before diverging to become bipedal, sometime between 5 million and 13 million years ago, a stance that affected pregnancy and childbirth. Bohannon makes a case for females being the first to use tools--"a set of behaviors…to change their relationship with the world around them"--some 2.5 million to 1.8 million years ago, arguing against the idea that innovation has "been driven by groups of men solving man-problems." Combing scientific literature, the author finds no difference between the brains of men and women. Many species inhabit Bohannon's fascinating chronicle, as she compares human evolution and life cycle to that of other creatures, great and small. Prodigious research informs a spirited history of humanity. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
