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 | | Woman: An Intimate Geography by Natalie Angier ISBN-10: 9780385498418 ISBN-10: 0-385-49841-1 ISBN-13: 9780385498418 ISBN-13: 978-0-385-49841-8 Paperback 2000-02-15 Anchor Find Lowest Price |
Editorials | ||
Product Description With the clarity, insight, and sheer exuberance of language that make her one of The New York Times's premier stylists, Pulitzer Prize-winner Natalie Angier lifts the veil of secrecy from that most enigmatic of evolutionary masterpieces, the female body. Angier takes readers on a mesmerizing tour of female anatomy and physiology that explores everything from organs to orgasm, and delves into topics such as exercise, menopause, and the mysterious properties of breast milk. A self-proclaimed "scientific fantasia of womanhood." Woman ultimately challenges widely accepted Darwinian-based gender stereotypes. Angier shows how cultural biases have influenced research in evolutionary psychology (the study of the biological bases of behavior) and consequently lead to dubious conclusions about "female nature." such as the idea that women are innately monogamous while men are natural philanderers. But Angier doesn't just point fingers; she offers optimistic alternatives and transcends feminist polemics with an enlightened subversiveness that makes for a joyful, fresh vision of womanhood. Woman is a seminal work that will endure as an essential read for anyone intersted in how biology affects who we are?as women, as men, and as human beings. | ||
Amazon.com Review Despite scientific evidence to the contrary, as far as the health care profession is concerned the standard operating design of the human body is male. So when a book comes along as beautifully written and endlessly informative as Natalie Angier's Woman: An Intimate Geography, it's a cause for major celebration. Written with whimsy and eloquence, her investigation into female physiology draws its inspiration not only from scientific and medical sources but also from mythology, history, art, and literature, layering biological factoids with her own personal encounters and arcane anecdotes from the history of science. Who knew, for example, that the clitoris--with 8,000 nerve fibers--packs double the pleasure of the penis; that the gene controlling cellular sensitivity to male androgens, ironically enough, resides on the X-chromosome; or that stress hormones like cortisol and corticosterone are the true precursors of friendship? The mysteries of evolution are not a new subject for Angier, a Pulitzer Prize-winning biology writer for the New York Times whose previous books include The Beauty of the Beastly and Natural Obsessions. The strengths of Woman begin with Angier's witty and evocative prose style, but its real contribution is the way it expands the definition of female "geography" beyond womb, breasts, and estrogen, down as far as the bimolecular substructure of DNA and up as high as the transcendent infrastructure of the human brain. --Patrizia DiLucchio | ||
Reviews | ||
Exposing and illuminating I first read this book from my local library. I loved it so much and referenced it so often in my class discussions that I decided to buy it. The book gives you a whole new view of a womans body that you probably would never had been exposed to if it wasnt for Natalie Angier. She has a engaging writing style and boils down complex science to give the reader confidence in what she is describing. She is very well versed in her subject (which is obvious since she is a highly educated scientist). I left the book knowing alot more about the female body and had alot of new ideas that counters prevailing myths/concepts about women. Definitely recommended! One of my most favorite books! | ||
yikes! Garbage. Bad science coupled with anecdotes and far-flung speculations. Add to this an annoyingly poetic writing style and a tone that demonstrates the author's contempt of all things male and you have one of the most overrated books I've ever come across. | ||
great read...enjoyed every page Woman: An Intimate Geography, by Natalie Angier, is an absolute must read...a must read for Women, definitely; but, also, I would even recommend it for men to read--married men. It is a brilliant masterpiece. Angier is a gifted writer. Her sentences are fluid, informed, and entertaining. She says things and phrases things in ways I would not be able to even if I had spent hours planning. She is a "feminist"; but, she is not angry, does not hate men, and loves being a woman. This is the kind of woman I would love be around. Angier's book starts at the ground level and works its way up through woman: the intricacies of female anatomy--the who, what, why, where, when, and how--right through to the heart, the brain, and out into society where women encounter other women and men. This book is not about stereotypes--although many stereotypes are dealt with--and, it is not about woman being better than or inferior to man--the sexes are not pitted against each other. Angier presents Woman: plain and complex, simple and intricate, beautiful and homely, passive and aggressive, clean and dirty, and freed and bound. The one major contention I have with the book is the heavy dependence on the theory of evolution. Where she can't explain something by evolution's terms, she just shrugs her shoulders--never once considering a Divine Author, an Intelligent Designer. And, while I greatly appreciated and learned a lot from the constant comparison of humans to certain types of apes, I have a hard time swallowing the idea that I can learn a lot more about myself from watching a female rhesus monkey. Yes, I learned a lot about those chimps and monkeys, and found that there were some "correlations", but, at the end of the day couldn't help but think, "Uhhh...but I'm a human." Though a Chimp's DNA encoding might be similar to ours by 99% (Angier 15), that small 1 % carries a lot of weight and makes a huge difference: we're not that similar. In spite of that one minor, minor contention (I can't stress how minor it is), the book is high on my list of "must-reads". This will do for you, as a woman--Christian and not, alike--what all those other "women" books fail to do: breath life into your weary, tired bones. Angier proclaims on every page: it's effing great to be a woman; let's celebrate! NOTE: I just read some reviews that gave this book a poor rating, and some of them seemed to have credence and I appreciate the concern they expressed; and, this is why i have given the book a four star rating and not five. It seems there may be some argument over Angier's data and her examination of that data. However, it is still a great read, as long as we take it for what it is: an interesting book written by a woman and not a scientific text book for biology class. | ||
fascinating!!! the book is filled to the brim with exciting descriptions of biology/humanity/women/etc. angier writes with a concise and poetic style, begging you to continue reading she does a phenomenal job dispelling various caricatures and stereotypes of femininity, drawing on a wide range of cultural and biological sources. i can't vouch for the reliability of angier's translations of scientific studies, but i greatly enjoyed them and she was comprehensive enough i suspect her main points hold up even if a few of the (many!) studies are not current/represented-accurately/etc as a fellow child of christian scientists (and unfortunately, like natalie, having a needlessly and prematurely dead father), i greatly appreciate her fresh-eyed look at the fields of medicine and biology.. a rare and exciting perspective, imo otherwise/overall i found the work most compelling for its insight into humanity and biology at large, and while its woman-centricity makes a good catalyst for this discussion, i found it regressive at times on page 374, angier quotes patricia gowaty -> "all of these strategies and counterstrategies are going on in real time, so that we have responses associated with learning and experience rather than as a result of coded genetic modules.. the ecological problems that one sex has to solve are produced by the other sex. nothing is fixed. until we incorporate that notion, of the dynamic and dialectic pressures underlying human mating systems, we'll never get to the real meat of human behavior, and we'll continue repeating the extreme, and extremely boring, parodies" wow!! but rather than employ this dialectic perspective, angier simply states it (at the end). she does an astounding job of connecting a huge number of exciting topics - nominally a discussion of womanhood, and effectively one of humanity - but she digs her heels in for the sexual tug-o-war, most noticeably by floating casual/negative/frequent male stereotypes. a particular zinger (p251) reads -> "men do not live as long as women do, after all, and the disparity in lifespan applies globally. maybe they don't have to live as long. or maybe they don't want to. maybe they get tired of losing their hair, and of the political pomp of the hunt, and of making bad jokes about their mothers-in-law" try substituting "men" and "women" along with your most despised of the tired-female-stereotypes, and it's a career finisher (in some circles) gowaty's transcendent approach would make a significantly more powerful/shattering/foundational work (imo). but, it's still a great (5 star!) read - and i highly recommend it to anyone who's intrigued | ||
Woman: An Amazing Book!! This book is fantastic. Natalie Angier writes poetically and creatively, and she seems to know a little bit about everything! It's fascinating how she weaves things like evolutionary biology, history, and personal interviews with women into a cohesive story about the female body. It's truly entertaining and educational to read, and has even helped me review for a class that covers reproductive biology! | ||