Best General Sexual Health
In celebration of its 20th anniversary, a thoroughly revised and expanded edition of the leading book on fertility and women’s reproductive health. “This beautifully written guide to a woman’s fertility signs is packed with knowledge, wisdom and humor—a must for the bookshelf.” (Co-authors of The New Our Bodies, Ourselves).
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Every woman should know exactly how their bodies work and this book def opened my eyes. I also find that charting both bbt and cervical fluid works better than any ovulation app or period tracker. Its also a very helpful tool for your gyno so they can better pinpoint if there is an issue with ttc or another reproductive problem."
"Extremely informative book, good to use as a reference."
"I’m learning so much about my body and can’t stop raving about all the insight!"
"This book is so educational."
"So much great information, presented in a very clear and easy to understand way!"
"I would highly recommend this for ANY woman....whether you are trying to not get pregnant, trying to get pregnant, or just want to have more information about the body you are living in!"
"This book is AMAZING!"
"The book to get AND read."
NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW , SMITHSONIAN, AND WALL STREET JOURNAL A major reimagining of how evolutionary forces work, revealing how mating preferences—what Darwin termed "the taste for the beautiful"—create the extraordinary range of ornament in the animal world. Deep in tropical jungles around the world are birds with a dizzying array of appearances and mating displays: Club-winged Manakins who sing with their wings, Great Argus Pheasants who dazzle prospective mates with a four-foot-wide cone of feathers covered in golden 3D spheres, Red-capped Manakins who moonwalk. Prum's attention never strays far from nature, and his writing [about birds] is minutely detailed, exquisitely observant, deeply informed, and often tenderly sensual." Anyone interested in science or art or sex—which is to say everyone—will want to read it.” —Elizabeth Kolbert, author of The Sixth Extinction “A fascinating account of beauty and mate choice in birds and other animals. "A major intellectual achievement that should hasten the adoption of a more expansive style of evolutionary explanation that Darwin himself would have appreciated." —Nick Romeo, Washington Post “A smorgasbord of evolutionary biology, philosophy, and sociology, filtered through Prum’s experiences as a birdwatcher and his diverse research on everything from dinosaur colors to duck sex. Through compelling arguments and colorful examples, Prum launches a counterstrike against the adaptationist regime, in an attempt to ‘put the subjective experience of animals back in the center of biology’ and to ‘bring beauty back to the sciences.’” —Ed Yong, The Atlantic “Prum’s career has been diverse and full, so that reading this fascinating book, we learn about the patterning of dinosaur feathers, consider the evolutionary basis of the human female orgasm, the tyranny of academic patriarchy, and the corkscrewed enormity of a duck’s penis. Combining this with in-depth study of how science selects the ideas it approves of and fine writing about fieldwork results in a rich, absorbing text . The dance Prum performs to convince you to take him on as an intellectual partner is beautiful and deserves to be appreciated on its own terms.” —Adrian Barnett, New Scientist.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"It concerns Darwin’s “other” great idea: That sexual selection (SS) is an evolutionary force driven by arbitrary aesthetic choices, rather than by the environmental imperatives that drive natural selection (NS). (Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex, 1871). Darwin’s theory of sexual selection had two components: Male-male competition for access to females, and female selection of males based on preference for male behavioral and physical traits. Prum takes Darwin’s idea about female mate choice* and runs with it, arguing that: • Female mate choice is often based on arbitrary and aesthetically pleasing (i.e., sexually attractive) male traits rather than characteristics that show adaptive fitness; thus, sexual selection is essentially different than natural selection. • This dynamic causes coevolution of male characteristics and female preferences, because the male trait and the female preference for it are both inherited by their offspring. • This coevolution can readily lead to a “Runaway Process” in which females come to prefer and males come to display very exaggerated traits. Males become more attractive by evolving appearance and displays preferred by females, but also by not being sexually coercive towards females – because coercive males are unlikely to be selected as mates in these species. • SS is such a strong force that the results can run counter to the adaptive results of natural selection; i.e., sexual selection can result in reduced fitness. Prum argues strenuously that sexual selection is driven by perceptions of beauty and sexual pleasure rather than any utilitarian purpose such as finding the fittest mate; he sums up these ideas as “Beauty Happens,” or “BH.” Later in the book he adds “Pleasure Happens.”. Much of his material is well-argued and supported with very interesting empirical evidence, mostly about birds. He is very convincing concerning the arbitrary origin of many of the traits females prefer in males; this book will likely change the way you think about animal evolution, at least to some degree. The results are that human males are kinder and less sexually coercive, by a long shot, than most of our nearest relatives, and on top of that human males provide parental care, which no other great ape male does, not even the famously peaceable Bonobo. They all concern Prum’s animus towards the adaptationist viewpoint; i.e., the theory that evolved features (including mating displays) are essentially about fitness. Prum has convinced me that many mating criteria are arbitrary in origin--but he further argues, at great length, that most sexual displays provide no information at all about male fitness, and this seems highly questionable. Oddly enough, in his argument about the irrelevance of fitness Prum echoes various Victorian critics of sexual selection whom he had previously eviscerated. When Darwin published his theory of sexual selection, Wallace and others (all men) claimed that female animals were too insensate to recognize or appreciate fancy male traits. Prum says that if mate choice concerns fitness, every teensy element of sometimes very complex displays must have been naturally selected for the information it provides about fitness. If Prum were to show us mating displays that favor inept, unhealthy, or weak males as much as their fitter counterparts he would have a stronger argument. I can’t evaluate all the details of Prum’s dismissal (although see below), but I perceive a considerable irony – Prum’s SS displays look just like Zahavian handicaps to me. Per Prum, males have developed costly aesthetic displays in response to female preferences, just as, per Zahavi, they have developed costly handicaps to advertise their fitness to those same females. Prum says that the appropriate null hypothesis for the theory that mating displays are about fitness is his own Beauty Happens theory. I.e., to prove that displays are about fitness, experimenters must prove that displays are NOT about aesthetic sexual attractiveness. It is almost the same book as Prum’s regarding the components of sexual selection, including similar but much deeper material about humans, with one major difference--Miller is an adaptationist, and believes that those Runaway-process-arbitrarily-chosen-aesthetically-pleasing-behaviorally-remodelled display traits tend to impart information about fitness."
"These former iconoclasts are now revered names – E. O. Wilson,Richard Dawkins),Daniel Dennett, Hrdy, Pinker and many others. This second opus was not nearly as well received as The Origin of Species. Viz: the peacock's cumbersome tail is a signal that it must be a very healthy bird indeed to bear such a handicap and yet survive. He makes a strong case that (1) female choice operates among all bird species, though more strongly among some than others, (2) that male and female behavior co-evolved in ways that were (3) often unrelated to adaptive fitness – how well the birds could cope with their environment. One of my frustrations as a reviewer is that the opponents of books such as The Bell Curve and Climate Change Reconsidered talk them down, they seldom offer refutations. Discussions of the individual chapters are included as comments 1-3.. 1: Darwin’s Really Dangerous Idea. 2: Beauty Happens. 3: Manakin Dances. 4: Aesthetic Innovation and Decadence. 5: Make Way for Duck Sex. 6: Beauty from the Beast. 7: Bromance Before Romance. 8: Human Beauty Happens Too. 9: Pleasure Happens. 10: The Lysistrata Effect. 11: The Queering of Homo sapiens. 12: This Aesthetic View of Life."
"Some might think his ideas might go over the top in the second part of the book, but in my judgement, Prum doesn't even scratch the surface of the depth to which sexual selection has influenced human evolution."
Ian Kerner offers a radical new philosophy for pleasuring women in She Comes First— an. essential guidebook to oral sex from the author of Be Honest—You’re Not That Into Him Either. Since studies show the average woman takes about 20 minutes to reach her first orgasm during a typical sex session, while men take a mere four minutes, Kerner advises men to delay their own climax and make oral sex "coreplay" ("the substantive phase in which sexual tension builds, culminates and then releases itself through the female orgasm"), instead of foreplay.
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Bought this as a gift for my wife (not the book silly)."
"Great product, and so far great service."
"Very insightful book."
"I love this book."
"Love the texture of the book...still haven't finished it...but so far it is amazing...all men need to read this!"
"everyone should read this book!"
Best Women's Sexual Health
In celebration of its 20th anniversary, a thoroughly revised and expanded edition of the leading book on fertility and women’s reproductive health. “This beautifully written guide to a woman’s fertility signs is packed with knowledge, wisdom and humor—a must for the bookshelf.” (Co-authors of The New Our Bodies, Ourselves).
Reviews
Find Best Price at Amazon"Every woman should know exactly how their bodies work and this book def opened my eyes. I also find that charting both bbt and cervical fluid works better than any ovulation app or period tracker. Its also a very helpful tool for your gyno so they can better pinpoint if there is an issue with ttc or another reproductive problem."
"Extremely informative book, good to use as a reference."
"I’m learning so much about my body and can’t stop raving about all the insight!"
"This book is so educational."
"So much great information, presented in a very clear and easy to understand way!"
"I would highly recommend this for ANY woman....whether you are trying to not get pregnant, trying to get pregnant, or just want to have more information about the body you are living in!"
"This book is AMAZING!"
"The book to get AND read."