Rating: 
Summary: Love is explained by evolution, and its mighty interesting.
Review: A fascinating study of human mating behaviors, written from a non-judgmental, scientific point, "Anatomy" is a satisfying alternative to the ubiquitous self-help manual.
Flirting, love, adultery, and divorce are convincingly explained as mileposts in
(wo)man's evolution on the African plains back thousands of millennia. The mating
behaviors are shown to be anatomical, in that they are instinctive, not learned. There are
hard truths here. Woman in middle-age are divorced because they can no longer
reproduce and promulgate their male partner's genes. For women, sex is a commodity to
be traded for comfort and security. Love is a few year thing, hooking a man long enough
to raise a child past total dependency (today's Kindergarten.).
Knowledge without sentiment is powerful and can be dangerous. Exploitation of
the mechanics of flirtation could be used by the unscrupulous. (certainly not a new
thing!) The demystification of love may remove much from its experience. A wiser lover
isn't a happier one.
"Anatomy of Love" weakens about half-way through as it becomes bit redundant.
Not much is missed if the reader were to skim a little towards the end.
Rating: 
Summary: A fascinating, accessible book
Review: As a scientist (chemist) I enjoy reading science books in other diciplines. Fishers' book was well written and researched, a joy to read. It gives an evolutionary view of how we evolved in body and brain with regards to sex and love, and a great deal of attention is given to the effects of brain chemicals, discovered via modern research. This is a thoroughly enlightening book, and to be read by people with and open mind, in other words, this book does not support the Creationist view of life.
Rating:
Summary: An honest and refreshing view of love and sex
Review: As a scientist (chemist) I enjoy reading science books in other diciplines. Fishers' book was well written and researched, a joy to read. It gives an evolutionary view of how we evolved in body and brain with regards to sex and love, and a great deal of attention is given to the effects of brain chemicals, discovered via modern research. This is a thoroughly enlightening book, and to be read by people with and open mind, in other words, this book does not support the Creationist view of life.
Rating:
Summary: An Honest Look at Love
Review: As I biologist, I am constantly frustrated by the unscientific (and often ultra-philisophical) interpretation that goes on when considering humanity, and particularly love. This book took the extreme interest that exists about human sexuality and love, and places them in a scientific light, without necissarily demonizing or undermining the amazing feelings that go along with love; Fisher simply explains the science behind these amazingly rich and powerful feelings in an attempt to better know ourselves.
Rating:
Summary: An Honest Look at Love
Review: As I biologist, I am constantly frustrated by the unscientific (and often ultra-philisophical) interpretation that goes on when considering humanity, and particularly love. This book took the extreme interest that exists about human sexuality and love, and places them in a scientific light, without necissarily demonizing or undermining the amazing feelings that go along with love; Fisher simply explains the science behind these amazingly rich and powerful feelings in an attempt to better know ourselves.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting but deeply flawed
Review: Dr. Fisher is to be congratulated for trying to extend our understanding of the mechanisms through which we experience the various forms of love she enumerates, and for trying to see beyond the trite social codes that are normally accepted at face value as received wisdom. But sadly her efforts are compromised by two fatal flaws. The first, and merely annoying, flaw is the inevitable requirement that a working academic must genuflect to the gods of Political Correctness. So after an interesting chapter that basically demonstrates we're unable to control ourselves when in the throes of strong emotion, she then makes the glib assertion that in fact we can and should control ourselves and never become stalkers etc. Dr. Fisher may herself believe in the moral "correctness" of this assertion but it is wholly unsupported by her work and therefore has no place in a would-be scientific book. The far more serious flaw in the book is that Dr. Fisher, as she searches for explanations for some of the more dramatic mechanisms acting within us, seems utterly to misunderstand the rudiments of the theory of evolution. She posits all kinds of "evolutionary" forces that simply could never exist. She does not grasp that selection forces can only operate in the present and can never operate for some notional effect in the distant future. Evolution is simply not teleological, but this understanding eludes Dr. Fisher and so her "explanations" end up being silly and implausible. So, what we have here is basically a work that provides a few tantalising glimpses into the biochemistry of emotions, yet fails to take more than the first baby-steps. It is greatly to be hoped that a more thoughtful and rigorous account will one day be written by some other researcher operating in this important area of study.
Rating:
Summary: Almost 10 years old and I'm still talking about it.
Review: Helen Fisher tackles an extraordinarily important but seldom scientifically scrutinized aspect of human existence; love. In this book she delves into the physiological and behavioral contributors to the state of being in love. Referencing both nature and nurture, the animal kingdom, and (still relatively) modern science she makes a darn interesting case to support "objectively quantifiable" factors as being responsible for an oft classified "ethereal" love. Fun, informative, intensly interesting, I recommend this book highly. Enjoy...
Rating:
Summary: Love is not just love
Review: Helen is able to lead you into a new fascinating world; the roots of a feeling most unknown called love. Through natural History she takes you to a trip back to the initial ages when man and woman fought fiercely to survive in a wild world. I book that anyone can read and everyone should.
Rating:
Summary: A fascinating, accessible book
Review: I found this book completely engrossing. Her detailed explanations of human evolution and her logical, clearly thought out and well-supported hypothesis about early sexual behavior allowed me, as a reader, to develop a rather comprehensive picture of patterns in human sexuality. More than any other book I've read on the subject, this one seems to balance the 'biology is destiny' concept with the acknowledged influence of cultural factors. I highly recommend this book for anyone even remotely interested in evolution, human sexuality or a perspective on modern relationships.
Rating:
Summary: Evolutionary stories about love, science and speculation
Review: Love was once a popular topic for scientists. It lost popularity for a while as a 'fuzzy' and perhaps even unknowable topic of study. Now we are again studying it, chemically, socially, psychologically, and also from the perspective of how it evolved. The evolution of mating behavior is the topic of "The Anatomy of Love." Evolutionary psychologists have come up with various stories about such things as why women might have orgasms, even though they don't seem to need them to reproduce. Can we ever really know what forces caused such behaviors to be selected ? Should women really accept unquestioningly, as evolutionary psychologists like Fisher propose, that their interest in sex is always secondary to their biological purpose to reproduce ? Thought provoking counter-arguments to some elements of this view are found in anthropologist Meredith Small's "What's Love Got to Do with It ?" Helen Fisher does an enviable, if sometimes tedious job laying out the evolutionary story of love, but is it the only story we can make from the evidence of modern human relationships ? Readers who apply these lessons to their own lives would do well to appreciate that human behavior has a flexibility that sometimes defies our interpretations of our own biology, and that those interpretations often change over time. Read this excellent account of how evolutionary psychologists believe love was selected through evolution, but keep in mind the limitations of our knowledge of what really happened early in our evolutionary history. Bone structure may leave fossillized evidence, but love and sex leave very few clues over the eons
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