Moderately interesting popular science likely to excite academic debate on sex and gender.
An exploration of the hormone that makes men do strange things while keeping the species going.
“Testosterone is present in our blood in minute quantities,” writes Hooven, co-director of undergraduate studies in the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard. “Both sexes produce it, but men have ten to twenty times as much as women.” She continues, “if the Y chromosome is the essence of maleness, then T is the essence of masculinity, at least in the popular mind.” That popular-mind aspect plunges the author into timely and intriguing yet eminently debatable territory, as she’s left to address such matters as biological determinism, the question of whether there are truly sex differences, and what role testosterone plays in sexual violence and aggressiveness of other kinds. Much of this boils down to the ancient question of nature vs. nurture, and Hooven walks a fine line between the two. Carefully, she notes how our now-well-developed scientific understanding of the biochemistry of testosterone does not mean that “we have to accept current levels of sexual assault, harassment, discrimination, or coercion.” The author privileges definitions of sex while not giving much breathing room for contending notions of gender. Exploring the question of why the play of boys and girls is different, “it is a remarkable and unexplained coincidence that social forces have exactly reproduced the kinds of differences in play that would be predicted from endocrinology and evolution—in every human culture where they have been studied.” As for the matter of how much testosterone figures into the appallingly high levels of violence in the U.S. and elsewhere, Hooven writes, “taking arrest rates as a rough proxy for the composition of offenders, men commit 80 to 85 percent of violent crimes in the United States.” Then the author brings socialization into the picture to allow for circumstance, personality, and other non-T factors. In the end, “it’s complicated.”
Moderately interesting popular science likely to excite academic debate on sex and gender.Pub Date: July 13, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-250-23606-7
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: April 21, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2021
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.
The chef, rapper, and TV host serves up a blustery memoir with lashings of self-help.
“I’ve always had a sick confidence,” writes Bronson, ne Ariyan Arslani. The confidence, he adds, comes from numerous sources: being a New Yorker, and more specifically a New Yorker from Queens; being “short and fucking husky” and still game for a standoff on the basketball court; having strength, stamina, and seemingly no fear. All these things serve him well in the rough-and-tumble youth he describes, all stickball and steroids. Yet another confidence-builder: In the big city, you’ve got to sink or swim. “No one is just accepted—you have to fucking show that you’re able to roll,” he writes. In a narrative steeped in language that would make Lenny Bruce blush, Bronson recounts his sentimental education, schooled by immigrant Italian and Albanian family members and the mean streets, building habits good and bad. The virtue of those habits will depend on your take on modern mores. Bronson writes, for example, of “getting my dick pierced” down in the West Village, then grabbing a pizza and smoking weed. “I always smoke weed freely, always have and always will,” he writes. “I’ll just light a blunt anywhere.” Though he’s gone through the classic experiences of the latter-day stoner, flunking out and getting arrested numerous times, Bronson is a hard charger who’s not afraid to face nearly any challenge—especially, given his physique and genes, the necessity of losing weight: “If you’re husky, you’re always dieting in your mind,” he writes. Though vulgar and boastful, Bronson serves up a model that has plenty of good points, including his growing interest in nature, creativity, and the desire to “leave a legacy for everybody.”
The lessons to draw are obvious: Smoke more dope, eat less meat. Like-minded readers will dig it.Pub Date: April 20, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-4197-4478-5
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Abrams
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2021
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
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