This is actually two books, both written by eminent science writers, but it is "Sex" I wish to dwell on (pun intended). Dorion is the son of Carl and an engaged, engaging, and omnivorous philosopher of science. Ranging over love, lust, sex, reproduction, longing, and fetishism throughout literature, culture, and the natural world, this is a lecture on evolution and a discourse on romance all in one. Sigh. . .
—recommended by Jeff, City Lights Books
On DEATH . . .
What does death have to do with life? In his short, intriguing look at how and why things die, Tyler Volk explains that death is not simply the end of life. Rather, he shows that death is an essential step in natural selection and has long powered evolutionary design. Volk weaves the science of living and dying in a deft narrative that illustrates how life uses death for more adaptive living. In fact, death has been an exquisite, ever-shifting part of the grand evolutionary story-from life's simple beginnings nearly four billion years ago to the evolved human culture and consciousness of today; from the simplicity of bacteria to the complexity of human psychology. Death reveals the connections between life and death, not as opposites, not even as complements. Volk illuminates death as an organ of life-rather like wings or fingers, mating behaviors, or thoughts.
. . . and SEX
In Sex, Dorion Sagan takes a delightful, irreverent, and informative romp through the science, philosophy, and literature of humanity's most obsessive subject. Have you ever wondered what the anatomy and promiscuous behaviors of chimpanzees and the sexual bullying of gorillas tell us about ourselves? Why we lost our hair? What amoebas have to do with desire? Linking evolutionary biology to salacious readings of the lives and thoughts of such notables as the Marquis de Sade and Simone de Beauvoir, and discussing works as varied as The Story of O and Silence of the Lambs, Sex touches on a potpourri of interrelated topics ranging from animal genitalia to sperm competition, the difference between nakedness and nudity, jealousy's status as an aphrodisiac and the origins of language, Casanova and music, ovulation and clothes, mother-in-law jokes and alpha females, love and loneliness. A brief, wonderfully entertaining, highly literate foray into the origins and evolution of sex.
Two books in one cover, Death & Sex unravel and answer some of life's most fundamental questions.
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