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How did wet nurses drive civilization? Are women always the weaker sex? Is sexism useful for evolution? And are our bodies at war with our babies?
In Eve, Cat Bohannon answers questions scientists should have been addressing for decades. With boundless curiosity and sharp wit, she covers the past 200 million years to explain the specific science behind the development of the female sex. Eve is not only a sweeping revision of human history, it's an urgent and necessary corrective for a world that has focused primarily on the male body for far too long. Bohannon's findings, including everything from the way C-sections in the industrialized world are rearranging women's pelvic shape to the surprising similarities between pus and breast milk, will completely change what you think you know about evolution and why Homo sapiens have become such a successful and dominant species, from tool use to city building to the development of language.
Cat Bohannon is a researcher and author with a PhD from Columbia University in the evolution of narrative and cognition. Her essays and poems have appeared in Scientific American, Mind, Science Magazine, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Georgia Review, The Story Collider and Poets Against the War. She lives with her family in Seattle.
"A page-turning whistle-stop tour of mammalian development that begins in the Jurassic Era, Eve recasts the traditional story of evolutionary biology by placing women at its center [...] The book is engaging, playful, erudite, discursive and rich with detail"
– New York Times
"Such a rare book: scholarly, funny, accessible and very important. A truly original history of humans that explains so much of who we are today"
– Chris van Tulleken, author of Ultra-Processed People
"[Cat Bohannon] is revolutionising our understanding of the human body with her female-centric history of the species. A hugely ambitious piece of work, and one that doesn't pull its punches [...] character and storytelling are clearly second nature to Bohannon [...] It's a book that's packed full of surprising revelations"
– Guardian
"An epic combination of science and speculation that places women at the centre of history"
– Observer
"A smart, funny, scientific deep-dive into the power of a woman's body, Eve surprises, educates, and emboldens. Who runs the world? Girls!"
– Bonnie Garmus, author of Lessons in Chemistry
