"Woman"

(An Intimate Geography)
-by natalie angier
1999
This book is taunted on the back cover as the shakespeare to the "Our Bodies, Ourselves" bible...and i can't conjure a more apt or compelling comparison. Does it feel so enormous because the subject matter is so under-researched? A bit...but angier, a pulitzer prize-winning science writer for The New York Times, brings fierce insight and flowing style to her subject. She is eminently humble regarding all we don't yet know about female anatomy and psychology, and appropriately incensed that so much of our ignorance is simply because (as in all matters of societal focus or funding), women are still largely what they've always been - an afterthought. She reveals reams of data, hazards guesses that employ more restraint than i might manifest, and you quickly come to feel that her compass is as well-pointed as any you'll find.
She offers chapters on the egg, genetics, gender stereotyping, the clitoris, the uterus, the breast, the ovary, milk, hormones, estrogen, testosterone, aggression, love, physical strength, and menopause. She investigates why human women seem to be the only menopausal animal on the planet, and rattles the cage of the possibly-criminal epidemic of doctor-persuaded hysterectomies. She offers a brilliant final chapter on evolution/adaptability (with a mind-blowing study on how aggressive monkeys raised by a more conciliatory species become peacenik paragons). She gives a biting rebuttal to all those (including some prominent women) who suggest that feminism's work is done, exposing all the double standards that still pervade our media and mythologies. Her tour de force is chapter 18, which deconstructs and demolishes evolutionary psychology (women are natural nesters who seek quality over quantity, and men indiscriminate seed-spreaders), replacing it with a picture of a highly-adaptive species who employ a sophisticated network of strategies in response to the ever-shifting sands of culture.
Superlatives very nearly fail me. An amazing piece of work.