Rating: 
Summary: Woman, An Intimate Geography
Review: This is one of those books that I am considering buying for every woman I know: young, old, of all creeds, races, and religions.... even after completing it I am STILL floored by its appropriate, humorous, scientific, lyrical, and profound words. It is empowering without any negativism. There is not a shread of male-bashing in this work of art.  Natalie Angier is a science writer for the New York Times and her work is infused with just enough science to make all the fascinating issues she covers comprehensible to any and everyone who reads this book.  She covers the female body like no one ever has, and I don't just mean the chapters on breasts, the uterus, and the ovaries, but the hormones, the menstrual cycles, nursing babies, menopause, exercise, chemistry, and the psychology of being a woman. I wish so much that this amazing piece of work had been around when I was 18 and wondering what the hell was WRONG with me! (nothing. apparently. But who can tell an 18 year old anything.... maybe if I could have read it.....). Angiers carefully weaves together the myths, the legends, the cultures, and even the misogyny from where we ALL come and gracefully and humorously meshes them with the studies, the sciences, the theories and the facts, and gives the reader an entire body of work on all of the issues about ourselves we are curious about.  It is book that teaches you something fascinating about how and why you are and work and play and love. One of the themes that surrepticiously repeats in this book is the completely normal, completely natural, "you are SO ok - it's laughable to think otherwise" theme. Women are complex and complicated creatures and we owe that to this magnificent temple called the body and we now have all the evidence and joy in this book to know that.
Rating:
Summary: wonderful, i urge this on males & females.
Review: while, as some other reviewers have stated, all of this information can be found in college texts, medical reports and other data-sources these are not formats the average person finds nearby or is used to reading.
this book puts the information easily and comfortably into a reader's hands, while not over-simplifying or dumbing-down.
it gives more information than most casual readers would ever come across in one book and in a manner that is clear, interesting, in-depth, and makes one Want to find out more about the female body.
slow in parts, riveting in others. a MUST to read for both sexes.
Rating:
Summary: Scientific poetry of the body
Review: Woman: An Intimate Geography is the most delightful and informative book on the physiology of women I have ever read. The range of Angier's research leaves almost no aspect of the female body unexplored or unexplained. Even, for example, such barbaric rituals as infibulation and clitorodectomy (still shockingly practiced in as many as 28 countries) are depicted for us in a rare combination of absolute fidelity to scientific detail, and with a moral outrage that is paradoxically spiritual.WOMAN, throughout its nearly four hundred pages, is exquisitely written. By brilliantly blending her scientific data with acute personal insights and by her expert use of language--exuberant and optimistic when the message is merry, solemn and meticulous when the message is most serious--Angier manages to create for her reader a kind of scientific poetry of the body. Ms. Angier's book should appeal to women of all ages: to adolescents for whom she lucidly illuminates the lovely tapestries of their bodies; to women of child-bearing age whom her encyclopedic information will help in making the difficult reproductive decisions of our era; and it will appeal to older women who have lived through so much feminist history (and turmoil)since Simone de Beauvoir first expelled us from the Garden of Ignorance. Angier's stylistic eloquence bathes us all in her affection and respect for women; she blesses us with the strength and resilience of her language; she nourishes us, evoking our most primordial response even as we absorb her intellectual richness at their source--giving us what every human needs--affection and knowledge, from our stem cells to the final Silence.
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