Human Sexuality Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)An ideal human sexuality class for adults. I really enjoyed all the information and cultural highlights this book had to offer.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Human Sexuality

Product Description:
Sexuality is a central but highly controversial aspect of human nature. In this new undergraduate textbook, Simon LeVay and Sharon Valente aim to help students understand the diversity of human sexual expression as well as the various perspectives from which sexuality can be viewed. These perspectives range from biology and medicine, evolutionary theory, cognitive science, social psychology, feminism, and cross-cultural studies to moral and political discourse. Rather than attempting to present cut-and-dried answers to contentious or unresolved sexual questions, the authors present solid data and a multiplicity of interpretive viewpoints. This approach helps students develop critical thinking, make informed decisions about their own sex lives, and contribute constructively and non-judgmentally to the social debate on sexual issues.
Human Sexuality is richly illustrated in full color, with photographs and innovative line art featuring "balloon-style" captions. Interspersed throughout are over 100 text boxes highlighting special topics in seven categories: Biology of Sex; Cultural Diversity; Personal Points of View; Research Highlights; Sex in History; Sexual Health; and Society, Values, and the Law.
Every copy of the textbook includes the interactive Exploring Human Sexuality Study Guide CD-ROM. This CD-ROM is keyed to the text, and features objectives, study questions, self-quizes,essay/discussion questions, key terms and animations

Want to buy Human Sexuality at other amazon sites? Click the corresponding icon below:

Sense and Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Sense and Nonsense is a clear, lucid explication of the current landscape of the research on how evolutionary theories are applied to the social sciences.By their own admission often oversimplifying for clarity's sake, they break down the different ways in which evolutionary ideas are used in the social sciences into four categories--human behaiourial ecology, evolutionary psychology, memetics and gene-culture coevolution--and show how these descended, with modification, from sociobiology, and from Darwinian evolution itself.

The book clearly and succinctly describes the methodologies and underlying assumptions that define each approach, and no less clearly do they identify their perceptions of the relevant strengths and weaknesses of the various approaches.Although, as another reviewer states, it might be more interesting in a dramatic sense to see them take a more polemical position, it is difficult to argue with them that each of the approaches has its merits and defects, and that, in a new religion, as it were, no one is served by internecine warfare.

I have two reservations, however.My first is something between a quibble and a small problem: Laland uses primarily gene-culture coevolution models himself, and although he is generally balanced in his assessments, one cannot but come out of the book feeling that gene-culture coevolution is first among equals in the authors' minds.They don't hide their sympathies, exactly, but if you don't know of them up front, you have to be paying pretty close attention to find them out.

My second concern has to do with audience.Whom is supposed to read this?If it is directed toward people in the field (that is, people who apply evolutionary models to the social sciences), another commenter is spot on in saying that it is written at too simple a level.If it is directed toward hostile social scientists who think the whole idea of evolutionary study of the social sciences to be debased, or worse, it isn't going to reach them; the book does not duck the fact that social scientists in general despise evolutionary models, but it makes no real effort to respond to those criticisms directly.As an introduction to the subject to someone outside the field entirely, it suits reasonably well.The authors say in the preface that they are going after all these audiences, but I don't think the same book can do all those things well; they would have been better to narrow down whom they were really speaking to.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Sense and Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour

Product Description:
Can evolutionary theory really help us to understand human behaviour? 'Sense and nonsense' provides an exciting, readable introduction to the science behind the works of Dawkins, Dennett, Wilson and Pinker. Including profiles of the major protagonists, the book provides the first balanced account of evolutionary theory, and all its faults.

Get 22% OFF

Want to buy Sense and Nonsense: Evolutionary Perspectives on Human Behaviour at other amazon sites? Click the corresponding icon below:

The Woman That Never Evolved: With a New Preface and Bibliographical Updates, Revised Edition Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)Found this book to be an excellent read.I am a biologist and physical anthropologist by training...with specific interest in human evolution. The links between behavior in our closest primate relatives and ourselves...are very relevant.I found Hrdy's scientific discussion of these issues...appropriate and as insightful as science allows us to be.I would recommend this book and other books by this author...she is a scientist with the background to draw connections AND and excellent science writier.Enjoy.

Click Here to see more reviews about: The Woman That Never Evolved: With a New Preface and Bibliographical Updates, Revised Edition

Product Description:
Hailed as a ground-breaking synthesis of feminism and evolutionary theory when first published, The Woman That Never Evolved is a bold and refreshing answer to contemporary versions of social Darwinism that shoehorn female nature into narrow stereotypes. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, a leader in modern primatology, argues that evolutionary theorists' emphasis on sexual competition among males for access to females overlooks selection pressures on females themselves. In a vivid account of what female primates themselves actually do to secure their own reproductive advantage, she demolishes myths about sexually passive, "coy," compliant, exclusively nurturing females. Her lucid and compelling account of the great range of behaviors in many species of primates, in many circumstances, expands the concept of female nature to include the full range of selection pressures on females, and reminds us of the true complexity and dynamism of the evolutionary story.

Get 10% OFF

Want to buy The Woman That Never Evolved: With a New Preface and Bibliographical Updates, Revised Edition at other amazon sites? Click the corresponding icon below:

Why Is Sex Fun?: The Evolution Of Human Sexuality (Science Masters) Review

Average Reviews:

(More customer reviews)There is a minor truth-in-advertising issue regarding Why Is Sex Fun?: The Evolution of Human Sexuality, by physiologist Jared Diamond: The title question is never really addressed. The true theme seems to be How Sex Came to be Sex as We Know It. Not that this isn't interesting in its own right, of course. It's just that the original question is worthy of discussion too.
Why is Sex Fun? reads like a lecture series rather than a book. Apparently intended to provide the reader with an overview of the latest thinking on the evolutionary aspects of the subject, this short work includes sections on different sexual (and mate) selection strategies employed by males and females (presumably based on unequal "investments" in the methods of getting one's genes into the next generation); lactation (why milk is produced by females, but not, as a rule, males); how and why humans, almost uniquely, came to engage in engage in recreational sex; the unequal domestic roles played by males and females, particularly in child rearing; female menopause (which is, again, nearly unique to humans); and sexual signaling (Diamond considers penis length in human males to be a prime example, but not necessarily a signal directed at females).
As fascinating as these subjects are, there is much more that is left out. Any full discussion of human sexuality, especially with the high-order concept of "fun" in its presumed abstract, needs to deal with that odd species' whole gamut of non-procreational expression: homosexuality, old-age love, and sex-as-power, for non-inclusive example. But Why is Sex Fun? treats the very large subject of recreational sex only from the "selfish gene" point of view. Even then, there is at least one major methodological criticism: Most evolutionary biologists and evolutionary psychologists go to great lengths to bring out the importance of "ancestral environment". That is, gene-based behavioral tendencies have evolved over a great deal of time, so it doesn't do a lot of good to consider them only from the standpoint of a modern participant. This problem crops up in Diamond's discussion of male hunting strategies. In a modern hunter-gatherer society, men typically go for the "big kill" (a large mammal, for instance), while women are more content to gather roots and so on. Diamond makes the point that the male strategy makes no sense nutritionally, so the answer must be found in differential sexual strategies. However, the possibility is not mentioned that hunting patterns may have evolved when big game was, in fact, rather more plentiful than it is today.
All this is a pity, because we know, from the author's other works (especially the wonderfully told Guns, Germs, and Steel), that he is quite capable of a fully formed presentation. Sex deserves it.

Click Here to see more reviews about: Why Is Sex Fun: The Evolution Of Human Sexuality (Science Masters)

Get 32% OFF

Want to buy Why Is Sex Fun: The Evolution Of Human Sexuality (Science Masters) at other amazon sites? Click the corresponding icon below: