Decoding Love: Why It Takes Twelve Frogs to Find a Prince, and Other Revelations from the Science of Attraction Review

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(More customer reviews)Love is a many-splendored thing.It's also how we, as a species, manage to reproduce and survive.This book looks at love from the latter perspective.In that vein, it discusses love (and sex) through some very non-romantic lenses - psychology, evolutionary and otherwise; economics; game theory; physiology; non-verbal communication ...

Trees really does cover all the bases here.This topic is a particular interest of mine and I've picked up bits and pieces from all over the place.This is the first book I've come across, though, that really puts it all in one place.

If you're familiar with this stuff, it's all there - David Buss, The Red Queen, bonobos, The Paradox of Choice, oxytocin, vasopressin, Helen Fisher, waist-to-hip ratios, Frans de Waal ... you name it.At the same time, though, you'll probably also learn a thing or two.

If you're not familiar, however, you'll learn quite a lot.For example, do you know why humans have larger testicles than gorillas, but smaller ones than chimpanzees?How many years do you think being single take off your life?Why are there so few genes on the Y chromosome?To be able to attract a female, how much extra money does a man have to make per inch under 6' he is?What kind of smelly male T-shirts are women attracted to?

In fact, I wouldn't be surprised if you'll become something of an expert, as Trees covers just about everything.He also does so in a very lucid, engaging style - something that can't be said for all the experts.I can't really imagine a better introduction.

The only problems I had with the book were in the last few chapters.One of these is ostensibly a list of do's and don'ts.Most of these were prefaced in the rest of the book, but some of them were simply a grab bag of things he wanted to introduce and hadn't had a chance to do so yet.These were mostly of the form "A study said that x, so you'll definitely want to do x."No discussion, no debate, no counter-arguments, no nuances.Some readers might even see this as a problem for the rest of the book too.

Another thing that was a lacking was a happy ending.Believe me, a lot of this stuff is incredibly depressing.And it's not that Trees didn't have a chance to.His last chapter talks about marriage, which had a number of good things to be said for it.In particular, I was struck how happily married couples tend to idealize their partners.What a great way to end such a depressing book.I think Trees recognized this idea's potential, but he really didn't play it up as much as he could.

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Product Description:
A smart, entertaining, and eye-opening look at the science of love.

Relationships should be so simple. You meet someone. You fall in love. If all goes well, that person falls in love with you. You live happily every after.

As Andrew Trees reveals in Decoding Love, this 'romantic storyline' has shaped our thinking about relationships for centuries. But the fairy tale is deeply flawed. Researchers today are making shocking discoveries about how and why we choose the people we love.

Drawing from the latest studies in economics, brain science, game theory, evolutionary psychology, and other fields, Decoding Love takes on a topic we all think we understand-how we fall in love-and illustrates that most of our assumptions are wrong. Along the way, Andrew Trees offers surprising new insights into the nature of attraction and desire as well as an intimate look at the strange intersection of romance and the modern world of dating. Throughout, Decoding Love reveals the frequently bizarre scientific findings about human attraction from the powerful influence of smell to a mathematical theory that one must date twelve people before happening upon Mr. or Ms. Right. Everything from a genetic marker for infidelity to the way the pill can sway a woman's choice of her partner is explored in this astonishing and thoroughly amusing account of what goes into determining why one person falls in love with another.

Page-turning, thought-provoking, and sparkling with wit, Decoding Love is an uncommon look at that most common of human pursuits: falling in love.

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Sperm Wars: Infidelity, Sexual Conflict, and Other Bedroom Battles Review

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(More customer reviews)Among animals, humans seem unusually obsessed with sex and thus a bit separated from the rest of the animal biology, which seems to feature a preponderance of 10-second sex acts. Robin Baker uses a lifetime of university study to try to explain human behavior objectively through case studies and discussions at at rate of one per chapter. It is a mixture of illumination, rationalization and sadly some repetition as the explanations seem to cycle through in the ~33 chapters. Most of the time, he hits his points, but sometimes he seems to miss obvious ones; for instance in the "rough sex" chapter, the woman's reproductive advantage in marrying a mate is discussed but the male perspective in such mate exploration is not. Mate selection by physical endowment is essentially entirely neglected, yet in human societies it is the norm that most people have multiple partners over a lifetime.In fact, in this book sperm wars really alludes to instances in which multiple matings occur in a short enough time span that sperm of different mates are selected in the woman's reproductive tract--a topic of a number of chapters. Practically every sexual combination is presented and explained, even when it is a bit stretched, as for instance the explanation as to why homo- or bisexuality, lesbian or gay behavior may contribute to reproductive success.In his role, the author is largely amoral--an observing biologist trying to explain a role for behavior in reproductive success rather than judging its societal context--though sometimes outcome of the occasional case study seem to bear moral shadings. For those who want to learn about the biology underlying human sexual behavior, this book has some interesting ideas.As a biologist, I found the absence of direct citation of experimental evidence was distracting, as I would prefer seeing whether conjectures withstand scientific analysis, but that is not what this book is about.The current book looks and feels a lot like a second edition of his best-selling book "Sperm Wars" of a decade before, but I do not know that to be the case; I am looking forward to seeing what readers of both volumes say on that point.

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Published to acclaim and controversy a decade ago, Sperm Wars is a revolutionary thesis about sex that turned centuries-old biological assumptions on their head.
Evolution has programmed men to conquer and monopolize women while women, without ever knowing they are doing it, seek the best genetic input on offer from potential sexual partners.
In this book, best-selling author Robin Baker reveals these new facts of life: ten percent of children are not fathered by their "fathers;" less than one percent of a man's sperm is capable of fertilizing anything (the rest is there to fight off all other men's sperm); "smart" vaginal mucus encourages some sperm but blocks others; and a woman is far more likely to conceive through a casual fling than through sex with her regular partner.
It's no wonder that Sperm Wars is a classic of popular science writing that will surprise, entertain, and even shock.

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Why Women Have Sex: Understanding Sexual Motivations from Adventure to Revenge (and Everything in Between) Review

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(More customer reviews)This "never-before-reported study of why women have sex was conducted online between June 2006 and April 2009.....The survey began by asking the women if they had ever had sex for one of the 237 reasons we identified in our original study." The study involved 1,006 women from a variety of backgrounds.
"The basic biochemistry of attraction is the number one reason women give for why they have sex." Women unconsciously utilize two types of evolutionary instincts to seek out and find their mates--they are "Genetic benefits" that "are the high-quality genes that can endow a woman's children with a better ability to survive and reproduce." "'Resource benefits,' are the second type that include food, shelter from the hostile forces of nature, and physical protection from aggressive men, help a woman and her children survive and thrive."
This is a fascinating non-fiction book. It's full of information that most readers will never have even imagined. One of the book's first examples of this is "the scent of sexiness." Women's sense of smell enables them to help select their best possible mates by the odor of the males "pheromones." A male's scent enables women to identify good hygiene and clues to the male's immune system and body symmetry and whether mating with them will produce superior offspring.
That's only a tiny sample of the fascinating information supplied by this book. What will surprise many readers is many of the secondary 236 reason's women have sex. This book also seems to prove that sex can greatly relieve stress and also cure many of women's headaches. Surprise, surprise-the fact seems exactly opposite of the public's beliefs.
Women also have sex to gain or regain self-respect, to gain status, to be popular, to attract a mate and sometimes just because she wants to find out "what all the fuss is about." Loneliness, revenge, charity, to protect their partner from other predatory women, and simple boredom are also important reasons. This book should be required reading for women because of the insights it provides them into human sexuality and motivation, but it's also fascinating information for males. Once a man understands the information in this book he will become a much more successful sexual partner with much happier partner(s).
The book includes excellent notes, sources and a good index. Somewhat surprising to this reviewer, the book is definitely a page-turner. It's excellent.
This book will also help readers of another recently published book by Eve Kingsley that I can't name unless I don't want this review published. It is listed on the Amazon listing for this book as a possible combination purchase as well as separately. The Kingsley book is also fascinating, but this book helps explains the thought processes behind its subject matter. I'd suggest the reader refer to my review of the Kingsley tome, but Amazon, or it's computer programs(?)doesn't seem to allow any reader reviews of it to be published?

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Do Gentlemen Really Prefer Blondes?: Bodies, Behavior, and Brains--The Science Behind Sex, Love, & Attraction Review

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(More customer reviews)I picked up this book initially because I wanted to know the answer to the question in the book's title: Do Gentlemen Really Prefer Blondes? (because I do!). The book explained several questions that I had been curious about. Since I am a face man, I was curious to know why certain faces are so irresistible to me. The answer was surprising and yet completely understandable in evolutionary biological terms. An attractive face is a symmetrical face, indicating genetic and developmental health of the individual and therefore his or her attractiveness as a mate. Why is long hair sexy? It's not obvious, but again it's explained by evolution and biology. Can semen in your body from your partner make you happy? Why do men have more casual sex than women? You can say the answer is that they are dogs, but that's not the evolutionary reason. And for you singles: you should know that intercourse with a partner is more satisfying than masturbation. Love makes you blind. It turns out it's not just a saying. What body language do men or women use to let you know that they are interested? This too has to do with the evolution of human behavior.

I learned a surprising amount of evolutionary biology and psychology from this book!

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