Rating: 
Summary: Great Intro...
Review: A fine intro, even excelllent, into the subject of "why and wherefore sex." But it does not offer a satisfying discussion of human nature, and is, I think, mistitled. Sex, says the Red Queen, is about keeping ahead and evolving a little faster than your parasites through a process that offers your offrspring a little genetic diversity with each generation.While the book does look at how males and females approach sex, it virtually ignores the question of how sexual selection, how male and female choice, might have played in developing human nature. The only apsects of human nature discussed here are thoserelated to sex per se and not sexual selection, parenting, disply, aggression, risk, social bonds, etc. Still it does offer for a wonderful and clear overview of the history of "why sex" theories and some nifty insights into some behaviours. My major complaint is that book does create a bit of a straw man in later chapters with respect to feminism, and, I think, unfairly characterizes the intersection of gender politics and evolutionary psychology. Read this book first, then read Miller's The Mating Mind and Hrdy's Mother Nature for a deeper but still easy to grasp and accessible discussion of how evolution shapes human nature. Also recommended is the brilliant biologist Zuk's book, Sexual Selections--really wonderful!
Rating:
Summary: Better than Genome and Origins of Virtue
Review: I think the book will be liked by a layman rather than people who have been working in this field. Although I found it to be informative and insightful, I don't agree with some of Ridley's conclusions. He himself proclaims - "Half the ideas in this book are probably wrong". Nevertheless a good read. I wouldn't mind reading it again after a while.
Rating:
Summary: A different sex discussion
Review: I thought Genome was a great book, and I think The Red Queen is even better. Matt Ridley has assembled quite a collection of interesting facts and studies that have been done in regards to reproduction and evolution - and not just in regards to humans. After saying "huh. that's interesting" to myself several times in the first two chapters, I started taking notes on all the information I wanted to share with others, and by the end of the book I had several pages written down.
I highly recommend the book. It's not dry at all, and requires no prior knowledge to enjoy.
Rating: 
Summary: Interesting, But Dense
Review: One of the mysteries that I've been struggling with for the past few years is why so many people engage in extramarital affairs. If most people agree that it's wrong to break marriage vows, why do so many people do it. Another way of looking at the question is by asking why we are so obsessed with sex that it overcomes our better judgment. Although I don't agree with everything in Mr. Ridley's book, it adds a dimension to the debate that I hadn't really considered, which is that almost all human behavior is driven by sexual urges and reproduction at an evolutionary level. The behaviors that lead to successful reproduction are likely to be passed to later generations, while the only trait that cannot be passed along is abstinence. From this model, people will engage in all kinds of seemingly irrational behavior when doing so is biologically advantageous. My fundamental distress with this premise is that it diminishes the value of human reason, which is something that evolved through generations just as much as the biological drive to reproduce. While Mr. Ridley premise is that one of the main values of being smart is that it allows the brainy people to outwit their sexual competitors, I get depressed when I think of us as essentially no more than reproductive machines. Mr. Ridley writes a good story that adds some nice twists to understanding human behavior. The writing did not move as quickly as I would have hoped, and some of the details about other species' sexual behavior dragged at times, but I recommend this book to anyone who is looking for explanations for behaviors that might not otherwise make sense.
Rating:
Summary: Interesting, But Dense
Review: One of the mysteries that I've been struggling with for the past few years is why so many people engage in extramarital affairs. If most people agree that it's wrong to break marriage vows, why do so many people do it. Another way of looking at the question is by asking why we are so obsessed with sex that it overcomes our better judgment. Although I don't agree with everything in Mr. Ridley's book, it adds a dimension to the debate that I hadn't really considered, which is that almost all human behavior is driven by sexual urges and reproduction at an evolutionary level. The behaviors that lead to successful reproduction are likely to be passed to later generations, while the only trait that cannot be passed along is abstinence. From this model, people will engage in all kinds of seemingly irrational behavior when doing so is biologically advantageous. My fundamental distress with this premise is that it diminishes the value of human reason, which is something that evolved through generations just as much as the biological drive to reproduce. While Mr. Ridley premise is that one of the main values of being smart is that it allows the brainy people to outwit their sexual competitors, I get depressed when I think of us as essentially no more than reproductive machines. Mr. Ridley writes a good story that adds some nice twists to understanding human behavior. The writing did not move as quickly as I would have hoped, and some of the details about other species' sexual behavior dragged at times, but I recommend this book to anyone who is looking for explanations for behaviors that might not otherwise make sense.
Rating:
Summary: Sexy Reading
Review: Sex sells. And so it should. Zoologists recognise sex as a major driving force in evolution. In this enthralling book, Matt Ridley turns his attention to the implications for humans. Polygamy, monogamy, infidelity, beauty, sexual jealousy; all can be understood anew in the light of evolution. There are surprising conclusions to be drawn. For example, polygamy may not serve the interests of men, since it excludes many from sex entirely. Monogamy may be the result of the male majority competing for a slice of the sexual pie (mmm... sexual pie). Ridley is an excellent guide in this exploration of human nature. His style is seductively easy to read, sometimes lulling you into accepting his arguments uncritically. But keep your wits about you and you will enjoy an engaging and clear - if somewhat whistle stop - tour of how sex has shaped humanity. This book can be read by anyone interested in what makes us human, from school pupils to professional scientists. One final tip: the first section of the book concentrates on animals other than humans. This is necessary to set the scene, but for the really juicy stuff, skip to the later chapters.
Rating: 
Summary: Powerful ideas
Review: The beauty of evolutionary biology is the absolute simplicity of its central tenet: traits (genes) that benefit a creature will be passed on to the next generation. Traits that don't, won't.
Sex, being the mechanism through which these traits are passed on (for sexual animals), plays then a central role in evolution, and in shaping the characteristics of species, since species are as much a product of natural selection as they are of sexual selection. In this book, Ridley choses to focus on human beings, but a similar book could be written about any other sexual species.
Ridley covers a lot of ground in this book, begining with the the actual mechanics behind sex and the theories for it's existance, to how it has shaped human beings and the differences between the sexes.
The book will definitely make you think, and provide you with refreshing views on topics such as incest, what constitutes beauty, polygamy/monogamy, the prevalence of pair-bonds in humans, and why men and women think differently. This is all done from an irrefutably scientific perspective, which is more than anyone can say about the garbage spewed on these topics from the likes of sociologists, psychologists and feminist "thinkers" for the past one hundred years.
I highly recommend this outstanding book.
Rating:
Summary: Superb Read
Review: This book is absolutely filled with interesting theories on the evolution of sexual behavior and of the effects of selection preferences on the evolution of various species. I found particularly interesting the notion that gender is not a necessity for reproduction nor even necessarily a good plan for projecting one generation's genes into the future. It hardly occurs to a member of a species that places so much emphasis on sex and gender that their occurence and persistance actually need some explanaton. Ridley does this with flare, illustrating with examples from other species what is possible and mathematically what is likely to occur genetically with various approaches to reproduction. He also provides an overview of most of the theories of why gender occurs and reasons why most theories don't quite hold up when examined against what actually occurs in nature. His own theory of parasite and infectious disease resistance and an "arms race" of sorts between host and parasite seems quite plausible as an explanation for the rise of gender. He also gives a thorough account of how selection of certain noncounterfitable traits exhibiting the health of prospective mates has caused a similar Red Queen stalemate between the sexes and has led to the types of behavior seen as characteristic of male and female humans. An interesting book.
Rating:
Summary: 5 Stars are not enough
Review: This book was my introduction to Evolutionary Psychology years ago. While browsing Amazon, it has been recommended to me again. I am writing primarily as I feel that 5 stars are not enough. Elsewhere on these pages, many have reviewed the book itself. I would like to add that not only does the prose sparkle, but reading the book might make you view people's behaviour anew. I found myself doing that. Read this book. It is provocative and entertaining. This is one of the few books that actually had me 'tingling' like a good mystery does......
Rating:
Summary: Informative, witty and fun to read
Review: This is the book that first demonstrated to me the power of evolutionary psychology to help us understand ourselves. Published a year before Robert Wright's The Moral Animal, which covers much of the same territory, this is to my mind a more sophisticated and more direct exposition. Both books are characterized by a sly wit and an incisive expression, but Ridley meanders less among the relics of Freud and Darwin and is less concerned about whether we're moral or not and more concerned with what's sexy and why. He had a lot of fun with this book and it shows.
The "red queen" is a metaphor for an arms race. In an arms race both sides run as fast and as hard as they can to stay in the same place relatively speaking. In evolution the arms race is between parasite and host or between predator and prey. Both are running as fast as they can just to keep up, because when one gets an advantage, the other finds a counter. The red queen comes from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking Glass and What Alice Found There (1871) since that monarch ran as fast as she could but never got anywhere at all. The red queen is also a metaphor for the theory that there is no "progress" in evolution, that "...species do not get better at surviving... Their chances of extinction are random" (p. 64).
Ridley covers a lot of territory here, ranging from sex to the handicap principle to gossip to why our brains are big (to figure out what the other person is up to!). The Red Queen answers the question, "Why is there sex?" Apparently we have sexuality rather than asexuality because of the arms race between microbes and our immune systems. Sex is a way of storing defenses against parasites in the gene pool of the species and then mixing them anew each generation to fool the microbes. Without the gene pool and the DNA mixing, the microbes would quickly evolve a way around the organism's defenses; but with sexuality the organism juggles its "locks" every generation and so is able to keep up with the fast-mutating microbes. When again the microbes evolve the keys to these locks, the gene pool is mixed again and the organism comes up with an old lock that the microbes again have to evolve a key to. With the same logic, and in a larger sense, sex has evolved as a means to randomly pit many phenotypes against the environment.
Some of the fun is the incisive way Ridley presents the ideas, and the ideas he chooses to present. For example, note how effectively he demolishes Freud's naive incest taboo theory on pages 282-286. Also interesting is his presentation of the idea that it is not thinness in women per se that attracts men, but a low ratio of waistline to hip line that fetches them. There are chapters entitled "Polygamy and the Nature of Men," and "Monogamy and the Nature of Women." In Chapter 9, "The Uses of Beauty," Ridley goes into some detail on why men prefer thin and blond women. And on pages 217-218 he explains why women cuckold their mates: "This is because her husband is, almost by definition, usually not the best male there is--else how would he have ended up married to her?" She wants the parental care of her husband and some other man's superior--she thinks--genes.
Ridley is rather modest and says that most of the ideas in the book are not his and at any rate many of them will undoubtedly be proven wrong. This is refreshing to read when I think about all the delusive ideas so proudly trumpeted by popular books on evolution and human behavior in the past. Desmond Morris's The Naked Ape (1967) and Elaine Morgan's The Aquatic Ape: A Theory of Human Evolution (1982) come to mind, both fine books, but now seen to be substantially mistaken.
Written in an engaging and lucid style, The Red Queen really is the best of a number of books on evolutionary psychology to appear in recent years and one that is a delight to read.
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