Rating: 
Summary: Ferrous Female
Review: Many books have been written regarding relationships between men and women. Some even suggest that we are of different species and it is part of a cosmic joke that we are attracted to and must rely upon one another.If this is the kind of book you are attracted to, you will be quite disappointed in this work by talented author Leonard Shlain. As in his previous two books "Art and Physics" and "The Alphabet Vs The Goddess" Shlain presents an observation that has troubled him. After a thorough search of the literature fails to satisfy his curiosity, some kind of internal dialectic occurs and a well reasoned "what if" process is presented. The stimulus for this story started when Shlain, as a young medical student, could not accept the casual dismissal of his question "Why is the normal hemoglobin for women less than for men?" All humans rely on oxygen dependent metabolic processes. Women require just as much oxygen carrying, iron based, hemoglobin as men. Why would nature create women to lose this essential product every month in her menses, while pregnant and also in childbirth? That question is the basis for a well reasoned work that presents possible answers that should stimulate much further discussion and interest. Shlain, also being an exceptional educator, presents pertinent human physiology, anatomy and psychology in an understandable and yet non-patronizing manner. While this book reads like an entertaining 'who done it' novel: the reward is not only a provocative explanation but a worth while educational process.
Rating: 
Summary: False prophet, real profits
Review: No evidence. Total disdain for evidence that others have gathered. Uses the guise of empowering women to pat them on the head, coo at them about their superiority, all the while telling them that their oppression is natural and there is nothing that can be done about it. And really, if this guy had anything real to say, why isn't he publishing in peer-reviewed journals instead of the popular press? That's always the first clue that an author isn't worth his proverbial salt. Or iron, as the case may be.
Rating: 
Summary: It starts out well.... and then fizzles out and dies
Review: Shalin would have done his theory more justice had he not felt the need to spread it out over 370-odd pages. Reading the first few chapers, I was actually enjoying the framework of the hypothesis: how time became, in essence, because of female biology.
And then it begins.
Oh, the horror.
For some odd reason, he feels the need to expand his theoretical framework to encompass his version of the thoughts running through the heads of the quintissential "Adam and Eve". Having to read while Adam ponders whether or not Eve's son his actually his son and whether or not it would be a good idea to procreate with his offspring is just horribly painful. Sitting in on a discussion between Eve and her fellow females about how stupid the males are and how Adam may have finally understood that thing called Fatherhood while they're washing themselves is really too much. But, it continues. For five more chapters. The hypothetical dialogue is painfully verbose, yet at the same time, disturbingly stupid.
At the end of the book, I was accosted by Shalin's ideas about the advent of dowries (to trade females with other tribes for money), grandparents (to have someone to hoist the kids upon), and the problem with females being overly aware (they use it to trick the men). Painful.
I'd recommend this book only to those who have nothing else better to do, or perhaps as a gag gift to your good friend who hates drivel as much as you.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting tidbits but way off the mark
Review: The author brings up a few interesting observations and pads them with information from sources as diverse as the bible and modern medical research. But his conclusions and theories are far fetched and some are just plain nonsense. For instance: bald men would have a slight advantage in hunting because they wouldn't look quite like other humans and prey would be fooled. If you ever tried to approach a deer you would realize that your hat and hair quantity had little to do with your stalking success. The author could have run this by a hunter or game ranger and gotten a good laugh before publishing, but he didn't. That people learned about the passing of time from a woman's period being in synch with the moon. I think people were noticing the seasons pass and day moving into night before they were calculating years and months. Even without menstruation we could still be noticing the moon. Circumcision to make men better lovers? I heard that uncircumsized men are better lovers. Besides, without the stress of modern life, men would be less likely to prematurely ejaculate. Men wanted children to carry on after his death? I think the original idea of fatherhood is for status during life. There is no evidence that men were worrying about their life after death in prehistory. But the author reconstructs conversations and thoughts these guys had. Please read "The Red Queen," or "The Moral Animal," for some brilliant scientific thinking on why we are the way we are. Even today many primitive societies don't associate intercourse with creating children. The author didn't cite any recent anthropological evidence regarding this one way or another. It would seem very relevant. I heard the author speak and asked if his book addressed infidelity. He said it was in the book but I couldn't find any entries in the index or contents.
Rating:
Summary: Entertaining
Review: The author is a genius. He is a medical doctor with excellent imagination and reasonining ability. I was almost stunned by his ability to intuitively and logically link disparate aspects of human society (grandmothers, early menopause, and circumcision for one). I think his conclusion SEEMS unscientific because the author relies heavily on footnotes at the end of the book to validate his claims. If you are curious as to why: 1)Marriages exist
2)Male\Female sexual peak differs considerably
3)Menstration is so evident and regular (29.5 days)
4)We became meat eating hunters
5)Boys are circumsized
6)Menopause occurs
7)Homosexuals exist
8)Human courtship is so complex then read this book. It provides valuable insights which will refreshen your perspective.
Rating:
Summary: A beautifully-written book that makes us think, but...
Review: the reasoning is dubious in some places. The theory that heavy menses would have been favored by natural selection for long enough to allow women to "discover time" is tenuous. Yet the questions Schlain asks need to be asked. Why indeed are humans so different from other species in the following three aspects: men's extreme masturbation habits, women's diproportionate menses drain, and the proclivity for exclusive same sex pairing?
Personally, I suspect that all these behaviors are linked to the fact that we are programmed to have sex constantly, unlike species regulated by estrus. A natural, post-passion hangover leaves us feeling drained and depleted a lot of the time--also triggering varying degrees of alienation from the opposite sex. These feelings show up in our lives as excessive energy drains and fragile intimate relationships.
Three cheers for Schlain for stirring an important debate.
Rating:
Summary: "What does woman want?"... and then some.
Review: There is the vexing question that most men ponder "What does woman want..? In a single word, the author tells us so. (I won't ruin it here). If you read the prologue of Leonard Shlain's book you will find how a question that surfaced in a truly wonderful mind, on a drive late at night, came to become one of the most truly remarkable, (if not fun books), I've read in a long time. How is it that women that once were venerated in culture, became thought of as second to men? How could it be, that a man would regard a younger woman as his property? (A case in point, today a father "gives away the bride", his daughter.) How could it be that "Mother Nature"....could be so seemingly cruel to one of her own? How is it that the moon figures so importantly in our culture and in the creation of time? From Death and Paternity, Her Climax/His Climax, Red Blood/White Milk, and Big Brain/Narrow Pelvis, (all titles of chapters), the author weaves a tapistry of luxurious complexity, that makes you want to savor ideas like fine wine. Never preaching, always informative, sometimes brutally blunt, and yet still sensitive to all the possible complexities, Shlain takes us on a rollercoaster ride with twists and turns that make you want to savor every page, and yet race ahead, as you follow his reasoning. Think of having dinner with an "expert" as well as a story teller as your host, just commenting casually on a specific puzzling quandry, and then inviting comments as you together, explore the possibilities. What would cause things to contribute to human evolution the way they have? Why make girls in adolescence taller than boys? Why do human females have a menses? Why is it so unique among mammals? What is the reason men desire children? All these answers are laid out without pretense or elitest jargon. You come away from reading this book with a wonderfuly whetted appitite for looking at the human condition with a totally different perspective. It's mischevious, in a wry thought provoking way, that would make for "dining" in an epicurian sense, as opposed to, simply "having a meal". After being transfixed, (perhaps seduced) by the author's style and prose, I urge people to read this book, so that if nothing else, there can be heated discussion of the merits, logic, and insights, the author offers. I suspect someone, armed with the ideas in this book, will make dinner parties and literary salons, bars and classrooms come alive, if not cause a certian amount of mayhem. I say, let the bodies roll. This book has made my summer.
Rating:
Summary: Nonsense about human behavioral evolution
Review: This book is full of errors and misconceptions concerning basic evolutionary and behavioral biology. There is little respect here for the basic rigors of presenting scientific evidence and weighing alternative hypotheses. The author gets many ideas in the field wrong, but nonetheless just breezes along, making things up willy nilly. For anyone seriously interested in human behavioral evolution the book is not worth bothering with.
Rating: 
Summary: Definately worth buying
Review: This book is intriguing, well-researched and full of amazing things to think over, even if they can't all be proven. There is no shortage of interesting points in this book. Although I am forced to agree with the reviewers who point out that towards the end, the book goes downhill, I don't see any reason not to read as much as you are enjoying. (The author gets too involved in trying to figure out what our distant ancestors were thinking, and it quickly gets silly and irritating.)
But don't skip this book just because of the end. It is a fairly long book, and only the last 3-4 chapters are this way. It is worth the time, money and effort to read the first 4/5 of this fascinating and innovative book. You will be intrigued.
Rating: 
Summary: Contributes to a fun discussion
Review: This is one of those books where the author stacks facts, probabilities and possibilities to take a shot at why human men and women are what we are today. He is tackling a huge subject; he trys to flesh out evolution from the points-of-view of many sciences. It may drive a 'purely scientific' reader crazy, but the real value is how it sets one's mind to questioning... and thinking.
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