Overview

We find ourselves in a time of great social upheaval. People are testing the boundaries of just about everything related to sex and gender. Biological sex, long thought to be a simple binary, is now being understood as a spectrum. Gender is being uncoupled from sex and expanded to an astounding range of diversity. The traditional categories of sexual attraction are being supplanted by more creative labels. Where is this shift coming from? The answer may surprise you. Diverse sexual behaviour is not a new development, or even a human one. It didn't emerge from recent progressive culture, it's the product of billions of years of experimentation throughout the animal kingdom. Evolutionary biologist Nathan H. Lents takes readers on a journey from silent crickets to lesbian albatrosses to bonobos who kiss, revealing what this incredible array of sexual diversity can teach us about our own. Amusing, enlightening and meticulously researched, Lents convincingly shows that diverse genders and sexuality have evolutionary functions far beyond procreation. The Sexual Evolution is a perspective-altering book that advocates understanding and demolishes biases held by even the most open-minded among us.

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9781837260706

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Reviews

Enthralling . . . Lents gleefully tears down cis, hetero and monogamous norms, outlining surprising case studies that give the lie to restrictive conceptions of gender and sex. The result is an indispensable glimpse into the queerness of animals -- Starred Review * * Publishers Weekly * * In this multi-layered exploration of gender biology, Nathan Lents takes us on a wonderfully thoughtful journey through some of today's most challenging scientific terrain. The result is a book that expertly balances the complexity of the issues and the compassion needed to navigate them -- DEBORAH BLUM, Pulitzer-prize winning author of THE POISON SQUAD Read this book - it's fascinating, charming and eye-opening. It dispels misconceptions about life in the animal kingdom and our place in it, but most importantly it shows clearly that nature's beautiful sexual diversity extends to all living things -- JOAN ROUGHGARDEN, author of EVOLUTION'S RAINBOW and THE GENIAL GENE Praise for Human Errors: 'Spry, plausible, free from jargon and much better than the usual run of popular science and medical books, which are destined to be shelved in the den of geek, Human Errors is the most enjoyable anatomical study since Jonathan Miller's The Body in Question * * The Times * * Written too entertainingly for the reader to feel depressed about our imperfections * * Financial Times * * Human Errors is outstanding, scholarly yet entertaining. Perhaps inadvertently, this funny book argues that if there is an intelligent designer, he is comically hopeless -- ADAM RUTHERFORD An offbeat view of our evolution * * Irish Times * * After reading Human Errors, nobody will see their body in the same way again * * Daily Express * *

Praise for Human Errors: 'Spry, plausible, free from jargon and much better than the usual run of popular science and medical books, which are destined to be shelved in the den of geek, Human Errors is the most enjoyable anatomical study since Jonathan Miller's The Body in Question * * The Times * * Written too entertainingly for the reader to feel depressed about our imperfections * * Financial Times * * Human Errors is outstanding, scholarly yet entertaining. Perhaps inadvertently, this funny book argues that if there is an intelligent designer, he is comically hopeless -- ADAM RUTHERFORD An offbeat view of our evolution * * Irish Times * * After reading Human Errors, nobody will see their body in the same way again * * Daily Express * *

Author Information

Nathan H. Lents is an American scientist, author and university professor. He has been on the faculty of John Jay College in New York since 2006, where he is currently the director of the Cell and Molecular Biology programme. @nathanlents | thehumanevolutionblog.com

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