An Anthropologist Under the Bed

Rating:
Summary: Amusing, but it lacks original insight
Review: The author dedicates this book to his ex-wife, not because of his fond memories of her, but because their bitter divorce is the cause this book exists.

Such brief explanation at the prologue, seems to be the backbone of how Mr. Niehoff sees the forces that drive one sex after the other.

Using the format of a novel, (not of a scientific work) he will seek to provide to reader a view of the possible causes that have lead to such dramatic changes of conception of what is the purpose of a family and what are individuals expecting of it, at least from the perspective of the Western Civilization.

He will attempt to make such explanations by seeing from another dimension a "life time video" the lives of its parents, its ex-wives, a date, a cockroach, a chimpanzee and finally his own in order to understand from a detached perspective why we humans dedicate so much time to sex, when the fact is that for more than 99% of the humans takes a very brief time of the life span, when it is compared to other activities such as eating, working, transportation, sleeping etc. So why on earth we dedicate so much energy to think about it? And why is it that the lack of understanding with the members of the opposite sex is such a source of anguish and pain? A genetic drive is not longer a workable explanation because the fact is that we are not desperate to cover the surface of the planet with more fellow citizens. On the contrary having fewer children is now a common trend worldwide.

Nice so far, the problem is that there does not seem to be any real answer, to which the author can always state that this is a novel not a self-help guide.