About the Book
An ambitious, groundbreaking and myth-busting history of the evolution of the female body
A NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
FOYLE'S NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023
LONGLISTED FOR BLACKWELL'S NON-FICTION BOOK OF THE YEAR 2023
A GUARDIAN, TELEGRAPH and PROSPECT BEST BOOK OF 2023
How did wet nurses drive civilization? Are women always the weaker sex? Is sexism useful for evolution? And are our bodies at war with our babies?
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.
About the Author :
Cat Bohannon is a researcher and author with a PhD from Columbia University in the evolution of narrative and cognition. Her essays and poems have appeared in Scientific American, Mind, Science Magazine, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Georgia Review, The Story Collider and Poets Against the War. She lives in the US with her partner and two offspring.
Review :
A page-turning whistle-stop tour of mammalian development that begins in the Jurassic Era, Eve recasts the traditional story of evolutionary biology by placing women at its center . . . The book is engaging, playful, erudite, discursive and rich with detail
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
[Cat Bohannon] is revolutionising our understanding of the human body with her female-centric history of the species. A hugely ambitious piece of work, and one that doesn’t pull its punches . . . character and storytelling are clearly second nature to Bohannon . . . It's a book that’s packed full of surprising revelations
An epic combination of science and speculation that places women at the centre of history
A smart, funny, scientific deep-dive into the power of a woman's body, Eve surprises, educates, and emboldens. Who runs the world? Girls!
A vast and revolutionary history of female evolution . . . [Eve] is a gripping, lyrical tale of female suffering, of remarkable resilience, of the lengths we will go to to survive and to protect our young. It makes being a woman seem truly extraordinary
Utterly fascinating. This book should revolutionise our understanding of human life. It is set to become a classic
I'm obsessed with EVE by Cat Bohannon. Riveting, jaw-dropping, hilarious, exciting, enraging and deeply, deeply refreshing. Bohannon presents cutting-edge science with glittering sensory detail, awe-inspiring story-telling, and a genius and often poetic turn of phrase. I will never forget her description of animals as "essentially lumpy donuts filled with ocean." I loved the real talk about giving birth to live babies and the reality of gestation and motherhood. So clever, so necessary, so funny. Finally, Eve's story is here and Bohannon's remarkable and gripping telling will change the world
A rollicking, bollocking, subversive counter-history, telling at last the story of the human mainstream instead of (as other histories do) the male-edited, male-glorifying sidelines. And it does it all with forgiveness and good grace and great dollops of humour. Marvellous and downright necessary.
Eve was immeasurably useful to me in my life-long quest to understand my own body. I highly recommend it to anyone who is on the same journey.
Why do women live longer than men? Why are women more likely to get Alzheimer's? And what is it with this damn menopause? Ten years in the writing, this triumph of rigor and accessibility by a Columbia University researcher is a myth-busting look at how the female body has driven evolution over the past 200 million years, continuing to shape all our lives today. In short it's a brilliant book about "breasts, and blood, and fat, and vaginas, and wombs...how they came to be and how we live with them now, no matter how weird or hilarious the truth is."
A writer with a doctorate in the evolution of narrative and cognition, Bohannon offers a refreshing and lively corrective to a story that has focused mainly on male evolution
Bohannon tells an exhilarating evolutionary story, as prodigiously researched as it is entertainingly written . . . Bohannon will annoy some and challenge some preconceptions – but her book is fascinating
Eve is a bold, original and bracingly ambitious feminist retelling of the origin of human society
A fascinating study
An opinionated clapback against centuries of male-centric evolutionary history . . . Eve is an endless source of dinner-party trivia, much of it inappropriate for actual dinner parties . . . Eve also suggests a new way of thinking about one’s body: as a thing of time, built on a foundation developed over millions of years . . . Eve is a love letter to the ancient, creaking wonder that is evolution.
Cat Bohannon awards women their rightful place in evolutionary history and argues that gynaecology is the reason we are all alive today . . . Radical and fresh . . . [Eve] is an impressive and expansive body of work
Fascinating . . . An impressive feat . . . Existing as a woman in our increasingly atomized world can be isolating in ways that are hard to even identify. Beyond making me gasp aloud in wonder, Bohannon’s book was an unexpected antidote, delivering a profound sense of kinship with every other woman who’s ever existed (plus those various Eve ancestors)
For over a century and a half since Darwin, we have talked about the origin of man. But what about women? Marshaling considerable wit, scholarship, and cutting edge science Cat Bohannon traces the history and importance of female biology and, in the process, gives us a refreshing new view on the origin of humanity
Almost fantastically interesting. Every few pages there would be some fact I didn't know or an idea that was new to me
A capacious investigation of women throughout time . . . A jaunty, digressive, and often whimsical tale examining the origins of some defining features of womanhood . . . Prodigious research informs a spirited history of humanity
Bohannon offers a bracing corrective to male-centric evolutionary accounts. She balances scientific rigor with entertaining prose . . . An illuminating and fresh take on how human evolution unfolded
Talking to Cat Bohannon is like being struck with a tornado of ideas
[A] punchy and utterly compelling book, which not only traces the evolutionary paths of our male and female ancestors over the past 200 million years but also argues that the way female bodies changed during that time made us who we are today: mankind is essentially womankind. Along the way, [Cat Bohannon] scatters explosive facts about our human ancestors, their animal cousins and our modern selves like miniature grenades. Rarely have I read a book in which every page brims with such astounding revelations . . . She has a gift for turning complex scientific theory into clear and breezy language, framing each chapter with an engaging vignette . . . A fast-paced yet scholarly book, containing 140 pages of notes, Eve is a magnificent achievement.
Cat Bohannon takes a stylish scalpel to innumerable examples of the dysfunctional ways in which medicine and technology have been limping along according to an assumed “male norm”, and investigates the evolution of female anatomy all the way back to mammals that scurried around under the feet of the dinosaurs. Highly entertaining, and full of novel perceptions.
You might not look at humankind the same way again after reading Eve by Cat Bohannon. The title is a nod to the biblical first woman, but it’s what followed her that motivates Bohannon’s work—the entire span of human evolution and how it has led to women being very different, and in many underappreciated ways, from men. This is both a powerful recasting of thousands of years of history and a powerful argument: why, still, do societies regard men as the final word in evolution?
An important and vivid book. Enchantingly written, the pages sparkle with delightful and novel facts. Women will find it revealing, and men will find it astounding. I give it my highest recommendation.
