Why Is Sex Fun?: The Evolution of Human Sexuality

Description

A fascinating insight into how human sexuality came to be the way it is now - Jared Diamond explains why we are different from the animal kingdom. Why are humans one of the few species to have sex in private? Why do humans have sex any day of the month or year, including when the female is pregnant, beyond her reproductive years, or between her fertile cycles? Why are human females one of the few mammals to go through menopause? Human sexuality seems normal to us but it is bizarre by the standards of other animals. Jared Diamond argues that our strange sex lives were as crucial to our rise to human status as were our large brains. He also describes the battle of the sexes in the human and animal world over parental care, and why sex differences in the genetic value of parental care provide a biological basis for the all-too-familiar different attitudes of men and women towards extramarital sex.

Jared Diamond is Professor of Geography and Environmental Health Sciences at the University of California, Los Angeles. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, he has won the BRITISH RHONE-POULENC SCIENCE BOOK PRIZE for both his previous books: in 1992 for The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee and in 1998 for Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years; which also won the PULITZER PRIZE.

Jared Diamond is the finest of the essayists in evolutionary biology by combination of originality, breadth and sheer authority based on personal experience WHY IS SEX FUN? is the best book on the subject I've read. This lively exploration of our sexual heritage offers fascinating reading for anyone curious about why lovers do what they do