An indispensable work of popular psychology and sociology.
A simultaneously frothy and substantive tour of female sexual desire.
The title of this “work of cultural criticism” is a double-entendre; Martin (Primates of Park Avenue, 2015, etc.) investigates women who’ve been untrue—i.e., unfaithful—and she debunks popular untruths about female sexuality. As she shows, women are not inherently more monogamous than men, and although Americans talk about valuing monogamy, many of us, including a lot of women, cheat. Sometimes women cheat to keep their marriages together. Rather than go through messy, economically disastrous divorces, women find sexual fulfillment on the side so they can continue to tolerate an unsatisfying marriage. Vignettes drawn from interviews Martin conducted with 32 men and women leaven the book, but the strongest sections are Martin’s accessible translations of academic research. For example, primatologist Sarah Blaffer Hrdy studied langurs in India, noting how female langurs often mate “promiscuously,” with as many males as possible. Hrdy theorized that this behavior is “assiduously maternal.” Male langurs have the habit of killing infants in order to lure now-childless females to mate with them. By having sex with lots of males, a female decreases the number of males who might want to kill her baby because, after all, that baby just might be the would-be killer’s offspring. The author’s summaries of research are never dry. She notes that Hrdy’s depiction of “sexually assertive” females was, initially, somewhat controversial; in what Hrdy describes as a “mortifying” moment, one colleague asked, “So, Sarah…you’re saying you’re horny, right?” Other scholars who make appearances are sociologist Alicia Walker, who argues that women don’t just stumble into adultery after one too many drinks at the hotel bar on a work trip, they actively pursue infidelity; and primatologist Zanna Clay, who suggests that females’ cries and groans during sex have the effect of advertising to nearby males, “Receptive and ready just as soon as this is over!”
An indispensable work of popular psychology and sociology.Pub Date: Sept. 18, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-46361-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Little, Brown Spark
Review Posted Online: Aug. 20, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
