Top critical review
3.0 out of 5 starsVery much a book of two halves
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on 5 December 2023
Well into the first part of this book I was very seriously thinking it amongst the best of the several thousand non-fiction books I have read in my lifetime. The theme, which had dimly occurred to me in the past, is that the biological and social history of evolution is utterly dependent upon the ability of one of the sexes to house an alien life-form within its body. For nearly all mammals this is increasingly complex because the alien life-form is also an internal parasite drawing on resources as it grows. The history of human evolution is indeed the story of Eve. Merely having to produce sperm is a doddle set beside this context.
However, the impression is given that the first part of the book was a disciplined and exacting labour for which the second bit is the after-work party. In the second part, due diligence seems abandoned, and non-sequiturs, personal anecdotes, and stereotypes flood into view. Also, some quite seriously silly assertions. I don't know enough social biology to challenge part two in detail, but I do know a fair amount about Central Asia in the Middle Ages. It was rightly considered to be the most advanced civilisation of its time, and thinkers such as Abu Rayhan a-Biruni, Abdul-Wafa Buzjani, Ahmad al-Farghani, Habash al-Marwazi, Abu Abadullah Muhammad al-Khwarazmi, and the incomparable Ghiyāth al-Dīn Abū al-Fatḥ ʿUmar ibn Ibrāhīm al-Nīsābūrī al-Khayyāmī preserved and built on the discoveries and knowledge of the Levantine Greeks so that they would in due course pass on into Western Europe. However, the author's description of this Central Asia as a model society of equality glaringly ignores the derivation of the word 'slave" from the word 'Slav" whose peoples were widely traded into Central Asia. Young Slav girls were especially prized – and not for their knowledge of Algebra.
So, a book well worth reading for the remarkable first part, with a bit of humorous light relief in the second.