Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World by Malcolm Potts
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(Hardcover)
- Pub. Date: December 2008
- 464pp
- Sales Rank: 55,667
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Product Details
- Pub. Date: December 2008
- Publisher: BenBella Books
- Format: Hardcover, 464pp
- Sales Rank: 55,667
- ISBN-13: 9781933771571
- ISBN: 1933771577
Synopsis
Human beings have been battling one another since time immemorial. But why war and terrorism? Why are men almost always the killers, and why are war and sex so inextricably linked? Why do we kill members of our own species intentionally, when few other animals do so?
Sex and War traces the cultural and biological evolution of warfare from its prehuman origins through to our own times. In the spirit of Guns, Germs, and Steel, Potts and Hayden pull together insights from history, archaeology, psychology and biology to produce a clarifying new understanding of human history and current events.
Combining exhaustive research and rich personal experience, Sex and War shows that war, terrorism, slavery, and the subjugation of women have common roots deep in our biological history. Evolution is not destiny, however, and the authors, with the crucial contributions of Martha Campbell, show how relatively simple strategies can help the biology of peace win out over the biology of war. In doing so, they lay out a rational roadmap to make war less likely in the future, and less brutal when it does occur.
The Washington Post - Melvin Konner
…with journalist Thomas Hayden, [Potts] offers a lively and highly readable account of the evolution of war and terrorism.
More Reviews and RecommendationsBiography
Malcolm Potts is the Fred H. Bixby Professor of population and family planning at the University of California–Berkeley. He has worked internationally as an obstetrician and a research scientist for four decades. He is the author of Queen Victoria’s Gene and Ever Since Adam and Eve: The Evolution of Human Sexuality. He lives in Berkeley, California. Thomas Hayden is a San Francisco-based science journalist. Formerly a staff writer at Newsweek and U.S. News & World Report, his articles and reviews have appeared in more than 20 publications including National Geographic, Nature, and The Washington Post. He is coauthor of the national bestseller On Call in Hell: A Doctor's Iraq War Story.
Customer Reviews
Fascinating, Informative and Intelligently Writtenby gradyharp
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April 03, 2009: SEX AND WAR: HOW BIOLOGY EXPLAINS WARFARE AND TERRORISM AND OFFERS A PATH TO A SAFER WORLD is a long title that may put some readers off as a sensationalist treatise. But excellent authors physician/women's reproductive rights activist Malcolm Potts and award winning scientist Tom Hayden have managed to create a book that not only informs but also entertains. This is a book that reads like a fine novel - only the writing is all based on research and peppered with photographic images that heighten the controversies it contains.
Though the book is hefty at over 450 pages, the chapters are plotted with a keen eye on maintaining the momentum of the message: war is innately a virile reaction, a male behavior, and the only hope to ending the cycle of constant war and terrorism is to introduce the nurturing effect of the feminine psyche. Change is a must and the manner in which the authors explore their thesis is rich in thought and touching in the manner in which it is written. They are brave enough to write controversially: 'In an increasingly dangerous world we need to analyze future scenarios as objectively as possible, using the best evidence. But we are becoming more religious, not less so. In democracies, religious fundamentalists are influencing policy and in the Muslim world fundamentalists are filling shortfalls in education. Fundamentalist teachings, whether Christian, Muslim, or any other religion, end up restricting and controlling women, which in turn makes wars and terrorism more likely. The twenty-first century is seeing a clash of cultures, but that clash is not between Islam and Christendom. Rather, it is between fundamentalism and reason. Reason's child, science, may entice us with new ways of killing one another, but it also teaches us to rein in our most aggressive tendencies.' There is much to learn from the vantage of both Potts and Hayden, and gaining their insights is as entertaining as reading a truly fine novel! Grady Harp
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