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Eve

How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution

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Eve

By: Cat Bohannon
Narrated by: Cat Bohannon
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About this listen

Brought to you by Penguin.

Why do women live longer than men? Why do women have menopause? Why are women more likely to get Alzheimer's? Why do girls score better at every academic subject than boys until puberty, when suddenly their scores plummet? And does the female brain really exist?

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.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2023 Cat Bohannon (P)2023 Penguin Audio Biological Sciences Biology Evolution Evolution & Genetics Science Thought-Provoking Genetics

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Critic reviews

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)
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)
Utterly fascinating. This book should revolutionise our understanding of human life. It is set to become a classic (George Monbiot, author of REGENESIS)
All stars
Most relevant
Informative, funny and eye opening. This must be read in schools to all young adults over the globe not only women looking for answers. I will rate it as high as Harari's Sapiens. It answered most of my questions about my body, mind and cultural development of our grandmothers along human evolution. Really enjoyable audio.

a must read not only for women

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This book is a meticulous factual journey through the evolution of the female body, telling the story through “Eves” of various evolutionary changes. I learned a lot. The author gave new perspectives on what that biology means, from why we walk on two legs to the development of writing to monogamy or otherwise. I liked the author’s reading (rare!)

Interesting and enlightening

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Connected everything from evolution to stories, anatomy and biology to culture, challenges millions of years ago to present. Felt like it was the book that finally connected everything together in one of the most interesting books I have read or listened to in years. Highly recommend.

Fascinating listen

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This is evolutionary history of Woman - rather than man, for once. Its extraordinarily well researched, shocking, hilarious, tear-jerking and insightful. Most of all it's beautiful and resonant. I hope all women and men read it. Thankyou

Writing women back into our origins story

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Not only does Cat make a complicated subject easy to understand but her humour and natural flow made this one of the most enjoyable books I’ve ever listened to. It has completely changed my perspective and understanding and I am extremely grateful for all the time and energy that has gone into creating it. Thank you 🙏

Absolutely Outstanding 🌟

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Very interesting ideas and insightful papers were presented in an inspiring way. Defenetaly will contribute to many discussions with my friends.

Makes you think but take with a pinch of salt (as everything should be taken)

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It’s not for the faint-hearted… pretty graphic biological descriptions that e.g. could make one wonder why on Earth we’d commit to pregnancy, and alot of unashamed references to our various paths of mortality and our basic biological and sociological urges - but equally empowering to all realms of humanity, not only women but all the other self-identifying genders, including men. The author’s effectively feminist and egalitarian stance is carefully backed up by evidence-based science and, IMO, successfully avoids bias on this basis. I LOVED this book, I loved the author’s humour, I loved the feelings of emboldening I got from the clarifying science that women are WAY more effective than males would sometimes have us believe.

Every therapist, scientist, politician and executive should listen to this book!

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Beautifully written and very very interesting, especially reading this as a man. Read really well by author herself. Highly recommended

Eye opening, absolutely brilliant

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I loved this book! The authors opens with the notion that there's much more biological and medical research being done on men than women, and then goes all in on writing a female-centric narrative of how evolution shaped our species through the lens of how it shaped the female body and physiology. It's completely women-centric and scientific literature like that is so much needed today. I do hope it will spark many more books of this sort, so we can have a proper understanding of the our entire species, not just the half with testicles.
However, while listening to it, it was evident that some parts lacked fact checking. For instance, the ratio of male to female births is said to be 1.7:1. In other words, it claims that there are 70% more boys being born than girls. Where are all the extra men of the world?! Obviously, this must be a typo of some sort, but it's present in both the kindle and audio version of the book and somehow it didn't grind on the ears of the author herself as she was reading it out loud. (My guess is that the 1.7 figure was a mistake made while transcribing the data from the actual statistic, which says that the boys to girls ratio is between 1.03 and 1.07 to 1, although why the author picked the upper bound of that range is unclear.) Another example - it says that 4.4 kHz is the frequency of the A note, while actually, 4.4kHz is C# (A is 440 Hz). I know these are small details, but if the author and her editors were too lazy to fact check them, it's possible that other facts in the book are also inaccurate, maybe even facts that are central to some arguments mode within. And I would hate for a book as important as this one to be open to attacks on its merit, because it's getting the odd fact wrong. Hopefully, there will be a second edition with the errors weeded out.

Much needed but flawed

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An excellent book that everybody should read as it is a real eye-opener. It is a popular science book and, as such, it has a number of flaws. The last chapters in particular are too "personal" and quite boring as I have no interest in her family and her life (a short biography on the cover is enough). But, I guess, these are the pitfalls all writers of popular science books cannot avoid as it is very difficult for them to find a balance between "hard science" and a more conversational style. So, although I didn't enjoy some parts of the book, I do appreciate that, in its present form, it will reach a wider audience. This is crucial because the topics she discusses are fundamental to understand how we are who we are today, women and men alike, and that's why I'm giving this book 5 stars instead of 4.

Excellent book

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