Things like live birth, lacatation, and big brains were added to the body plan at different times separated by millions of years. A rollicking, bollocking, subversive counter-history, telling at last the story of the human mainstream instead of (as other histories do) the male-edited, male-glorifying sidelines. For far too long the discussion has been driven by men who often were (perhaps consciously, perhaps not) defending their privileges and power against any perceived threat. An illustration from Eve: ‘The more we know about women, from their ovaries to their aortas, the more we know about everybody. And to protect her parents from severe penalties, she must secretly investigate before anyone else finds out.

When scientists study only the male norm, we’re getting less than half of a complicated picture; all too often, we don’t know what we’re missing by ignoring sex differences, because we’re not asking the question. I read Meg Clothier's The Book of Eve in a quick burst, enchanted by the plot, the mysterious manuscript, and the unfolding relationships between characters. Empires of EVE chronicles the birth of the virtual world EVE Online and documents its descent into total war as ideological factions of players divided the game world and fought for its future. Washington, DC, 1948: Eleanor arrives in the city with ambition, hope and a past she’s trying her hardest to run from.You can’t tell me that Ruby and Eleanor aren’t real people because they’re real in my heart, and I will never forget them. A page-turning whistle-stop tour of mammalian development that begins in the Jurassic Era, Eve recasts the traditional story of evolutionary biology by placing women at its center…. All of it fascinating and written in a style a layperson can understand, but certainly overwhelming at times - thank goodness for discrete chapters which can be picked up at. Bohannon presents nothing less than a new history of the species by examining human evolution through the lens of womankind. TheBookAtWar by Andrew Pettegree is the perfect present for bibliophiles and history buffs alike – a fascinating exploration of the role of books in wartime.

When Bohannon later introduces the genesis of breasts and placental wombs and women's heightened sensory perception — each of which development was absolutely essential to evolving our species into what it is today — it’s hard not to think that perhaps the female form is the pinnacle of human evolution, with the stripped-down male contributing some sperm now and then. Her essays and poems have appeared in Scientific American, Mind, Science Magazine, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Georgia Review, The Story Collider and Poets Against the War. However, she is definitely inserting a lot of modern gender politics in the book because every few pages there is a snarky comment about gender essentialists, or how trans women don't have uterus's but they are still women (no, they are biological men who are changing their gender presentation), and it is extremely distracting because the book is about female biology. The best and most important aspects of being human - our language, our compassion, our ability to form friendships across the divides of family, race, nationality, and time, all have their origins in our nature as mammals. Too, the author's pervasive use of "she" and "her" to discuss the creatures of the fossil record, it decisively moves away from the male-by-default assumption baked into so much of the writing on our distant ancestors.Picking up where Sapiens left off, Eve will completely change what you think you know about evolution and why Homo sapiens has become such a successful and dominant species.