Rating: 
Summary: why do people give average review for great books?
Review: I always am interested in How Review works. I think there is some sort of "self selection process choice" in how people review books. I often find the most best sellers books are not very well reviewed.This is a good book, explaining the difference between how men and women see things and how genetically they are different. Allan and Barbara make a good living out of the book, it is traslated to 31 languages and sold for more than 3 million copies. Easy to read, and fun with a lot of witty quotes. Yes, there are several repetitions throughout but any other books always bear repetitions! It reminds me of the what Oscar to films do: Great Review, but not box office, and other Advertising Awards (great ads, no selling), I love 007 series since i was a kid, and i never understand why they never get Oscars. ;-). So, if you want great review books, look for the great review books (you might not like it!), but if you want to enjoy reading insighful difference between men and women, get this book and enjoy it during a nice sunny weekends.
Rating: 
Summary: Basically a good book
Review: I enjoyed this book. I would have preferred a little more science, with fewer attempts at humour where it wasn't needed. Also, I think it was less 'useful' than just interesting. I can't understand the negative reaction from so many people, which seems over the top and defensive. I found this book interesting and enlightening - I just would have preferred it to be more straight-faced.
Rating: 
Summary: how can ace be eleven and one, huh?
Review: I know men who have no sense of direction or map reading skills and couldnt swing a hammer for the life of them. And no, they arent gay. Women can be just as efficient and predatory as men and, yes yes, even capable of destruction. This book has no scientific... no forget that. this book was written by morons that assume everyone is also moronic. If you want proof, look at the diagram of contrasting expressions between men and women while they're listening. Very few women listen to just anybody talk and light up with emotions and lots of men possess charisma, empathy and emotion. So ha Peases, you make me laugh so hard its magically delicious!
Rating:
Summary: I can't read maps? Wow, that's news to me.
Review: I've been the navigator (a very good one) on family trips since I was ten, and I'm majoring in geology, which requires a LOT of map-reading and mental manipulation of three-dimensional objects, as well as drawing maps and blueprints of local areas/buildings from the age of 8 onwards. Golly gosh, if someone had just bothered to -tell- me that I'm incapable of doing these things, I guess so many male classmates wouldn't have come to me for help in figuring out topo maps. Just another addition to the hysterical resurgence of attempts to keep the status quo, keep women out of the sciences and allow women who aren't good at math and science to be validated in their lack of ability by designating it as simply natural and inevitable-- something they need not feel guilt over; it's all right, honey, you don't have to change because you can't. Through establishing an artificial norm of some 'natural' female sphere of ability and subtly condemning deviations from same as unnatural (who wants to be an unfeminine freak of nature?), biology rather than the Bible has become the arbiter of what women are and aren't allowed to be capable of. At the core of it all, an awful lot of the attitudes Mary Wollstonecraft railed brilliantly against in "Vindication of the Rights of Women" haven't changed at all.
Rating:
Summary: Simply The Best!!
Review: I'm not an avid reader of self help books but this book was fantastic! Never did I know the reasons why women like me act the way they are and I've shared this book with my boyfriend and we've learned to tolerate each other better. The initial reation we had to this book was gonna be lousy but we seem to relate what we read to the experiences we had together. Their other book; Why Men Lie and Why Women Cry are also highly recommended. Great humour comes along with every article they wrote. Simply the best!! Can't wait to get my hands on their new book which will be launched next year
Rating:
Summary: Old sexist common sense desguised in easy modern science...
Review: This book pretends to be based on scientific evidence. But we are told at the same time that this evidence would be so « politically incorrect » in a world dominated by ideologic feminism, that many scientists accepted to inform the authors on the sole condition that they remained anonymous... Strange scientists that may be so afraid of the truth(Copernic, Galileo, Darwin at their own times took more risks and were not so shy...) And poor readers that are not allowed to check by themselves the exact scope and content of studies that are supposed to definitively prove, for instance, that men are stronger as regards spatial intelligence, while women need to chat out their overwhelming emotions, hahahah (By the way, studies I am aware of are not so unanymous in identifying brain differences as regards language ability and spatial intelligence, and testosterone is not always improving performance...)
The authors' relentlessness to bring every sexual difference back to a prehistoric time where men were efficient, tunnel-sighted hunters and females wide-sighted, talkative fire-and-baby caretakers, is especially suspect. Actually, most scientists believe that animal and human genre difference relate mote to sexual selection, i.e. competition amongst males, than to natural selection, i.e. the distribution of tasks between genders optimizing the specie's chance of survival. Male oversize and agressivity is very common by mammalian species that don't hunt nor fight against predators : it has little to do will any male specialization in hunting. It is remarkable that the Peases may have missed this dimension of the story... Is it not rather that, for some mysterious reasons, male competition for females does not match in their demonstration ? In the « real » scientific world, there is even no evidence at all so far that prehistoric men hunted while their women took care of the nest... Actually, observations of hunting mammalian species suggest that, from lions to simians, females can be widely running the hunt - males preserving their energy to fight against each other for sexual prevalence.
The consequence is that it is impossible to sort out the information provided by this book : some of it is so obviously uncorrect, farfetched, misleadingly presented or oversimplified that even the rest that may be true becomes suspect.
In conclusion, the issue raised by this book is a double one :
1. What is the intention of the authors ? To pseudo-demonstrate a natural repartition of tasks and duties between genres, for instance that women are biologically deviced to stay home and raise children, leaving mathematics and car driving to men - while pretending vehemently that it is not the purpose ?
2. How could this book be so successful, and who could take it seriously ? I am especially amazed to read from other reviewers that this book has « changed their lives », and how. For this book does not bring any food for thought apart from its intentions and methodology. On the contrary, what it tells is what some people have wanted to believe for centuries. It is the quintessence of old common sense. The new thing is the systematical resort to uncheckable scientific evidence. Perhaps it's what some people what : to read that what they have always wanted to believe is the absolute truth of science. Feminism is the enemy. Backlash take all possible forms. One of them is the Peases' book. It's not the most agressive one. Nor the most subtile!
Rating:
Summary: Just like Mars and Venus only different
Review: Here we go again! I write this as a female who once again fails to fit the stereotype. In the words of Neuro-Linguistic Programing (NLP) sometimes we have to "sort by difference." Men and woman are different, to be sure. And I think it behooves both men and women to realize this. But in my humble opinion, this book leans more towards generalizing too much. And when I read generalizations, especially those written by educated people, I often fall into the trap of (a) expecting all members of each gender to act the same and (b) thinking that there is something wrong with me because I don't fit the stereotype and (c) feeling like I can't improve my performance on something -- like reading maps -- because genetically and hormonally, I'm not cut out to do it. To be sure, the Peases use other examples besides "men not listening" and "women not reading maps." But I will stick to these two. 1. Even if men "naturally" don't listen, they can learn to do so, and this process is not going to lower their testosterone level. It's called GOOD MANNERS. Men are fully capable of doing this. It may take some practice, as all good skills do. But it can be done. 2. If women don't "naturally" read maps, they need to be taught how to do so. There is nothing about estrogen levels that precludes a woman from learning how to read route numbers and to learn that the top of the page is North, the bottom is south, the left is West, and the right is East. And it won't make a woman any less than a woman if she is taught how to use a compass. It can be done! The Peases try to attempt the "nature-nurture" argument. I don't know how they would respond to what I have to say here, but I think that there is something to it. My father has a profession where he has to travel a lot, so I learned to read maps at a very early age. He is also an artist, so I learned spatial concepts early on, too. I was also exposed to domestic skills too (i.e., keeping house) and I didn't catch onto that very well! Maybe a book like this can help men and women understand the difference in communication styles. However, I've had just as much trouble understanding the communication styles of my female friends as I have my male ones. Maybe if we all practice common courtesy, good manners, and good teaching principles, some of these "general" differences won't be as noticeable. And then we can work on our weaknesses and not feel like we're trapped in them because of our gender. And yet, we will still remain two wonderfully distinct genders who can understand each other just fine. And then I can read a map and not feel guilty!
Rating:
Summary: I can read a map. Is this why I didn't marry til I was 55?
Review: Here we go again. It's Mars and Venus again, but this time with unwillingness to listen by men and inability to read maps by women. Just like it, only different! I hate to say this, folks, but this female learned to read maps a long time ago. And I have a father who listens very well. Maybe the authors of this book would say we're "exceptions." I only know that there are a lot of exceptions out there! My problem with this book isn't "politically incorrect" issues. I don't like stereotyping. I'll tell you why I can read a map. I learned how. I stayed awake in my geography class and learned what north, south, east and west meant. I learned what route numbers were. I followed the routes, learned what the numbers meant, and found out that I could read it! I liked to look at the globe, and found that when a country was positioned directly above another country it was to the NORTH! (Gasp) I wonder if my estrogen count went down because of this. I also learned spatial concepts. Why? I learned them! I was taught them! Although I'm American, I come from a long line of Dutch painters and learned three point perspective (adjusting three dimensions to a flat surface) and I learned all about volume in square feet, yards, miles -- and even cubic centimeters. Uh, oh! Another drop in estrogen? I don't know, but I sure have had fun painting pictures. And patents? Well, how many women have had ideas that we haven't heard of? We won't know -- because they haven't been mentioned! However, many a policeman can thank a woman for inventing the bullet proof vest, many a fireman is grateful for fire excapes (invented by a female). I have also heard that the laser printer was invented by a woman. I have my some ideas to offer here: 1. If women are less likely to mess around than men, it is because sex produces babies and the woman is the one who carries the baby around for nine months and gives birth to it. Women simply have more personal consequences. It's odd that a man is more "polygamous" but will break out in white-heat anger if the woman in his life is interested in anyone else but him. 2. If women can't read maps, parallel park or do mechanical things as well as men, teach them to do it, for crying out loud! That's probably how men learn to do oit. By the way, my best friend could parallel park like a pro, and she told me that it was because her driver ed teacher gave her an exact procedure for doing it right. 3. If men like to give advice and not take it, tell them to grow up. 4. If men don't listen, teach them how to do it. If men don't "naturally" listen, and women don't "naturally read maps (or whatever other tasks each gender is't supposed to be able to do) it does not preclude their learning how. 5. If a woman gets exasperated because her husband doesn't act like she does, or a man gets mad because his wife doesn't do things his way, then teach them that it is bad manners as well as harmful to try to make someone over. This has nothing to do with gender dynamics and everything to do with plain old common courtesy. I believe that gender generalizations can cause a lot of harm. For many years I didn't study logic and I stopped trying to better myself mathematically because I believed that I couldn't because I was female. Imagine my surprise when I aced a college logic test! There has got to be a better way to deal with gender differences than arbitrarily telling people that they can or cannot do something well because of hormones. Give me a break!
Rating: 
Summary: I expected more
Review: May be my expectations were too high, but this book did not do it for me. It is funny to read, but not my favorite "can't put it down" book. Helpfull? may be - not the best on the market in my opinion
Rating:
Summary: I Loved It!
Review: You know, this book may not be for the high-brow reader, but just for us regular folks trying to understand the opposite sex. I found it humorous, insightful, and an easy read. While the explanation of how gays/lesbians get to be that way may be sophomoric, it does give some food for thought. Anyway, I thought it was terrific.
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