Matt Ridley, ?The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature?
Penguin (Non-Classics) | ISBN: 0140245480 | June 1, 1995 | 416 pages | PDF | 2.2 M
Referring to Lewis Carroll's Red Queen from Through the Looking-Glass, a character who has to keep running to stay in the same place, Matt Ridley demonstrates why sex is humanity's best strategy for outwitting its constantly mutating internal predators. The Red Queen answers dozens of other riddles of human nature and culture -- including why men propose marriage, the method behind our maddening notions of beauty, and the disquieting fact that a woman is more likely to conceive a child by an adulterous lover than by her husband. Brilliantly written, The Red Queen offers an extraordinary new way of interpreting the human condition and how it has evolved. The implications to the future human civilization are staggering
Science writer Matt Ridley's book "The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature" is outstanding. I have read at least 20 other books by various authors on this subject, and yet Ridley's book contains a vast amount of original work and brilliant viewpoints.
His language is accessible, witty, and moving. His explanations and arguments are well researched, and elegantly written.
Ridley takes you on a journey, for those willing, into nature's infinite world of sexual evolution using existing species as examples. You'll end up realizing how constricted our society is in relation to our nature. The book opened my mind to how diverse our society can be, and how we limit and restrict ourselves. I find this book to be one of his best works.
Experts in every field of living systems should read this book, the implications are staggering. Although written entirely from a biological / genetic / nature point of view, anyone could use the material to develop an improved system. For example, improved political systems, draft laws that make sense, market products more successfully, understand the criminal mind-set, raise children better, better discern the cause of war and violence, etc.
In a nut-shell, if you want to understand the infinite possibility of human potential, this book gives you the "theory of operation" and should be considered the bible on how central sexuality is to the nature of humankind and our modern civilization.
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