By TLB Contributor & Talk Show Host: Leslie Carol Botha
I am extremely pleased to announce this interview with Dr. Melvin Konner. Please read the feature post on my blog that highlights Konner’s work and an excerpt from his book. Not only will I read “Women After All,” I am extremely interested in the two other books he as authored as well. And of course, neuroscience is a field I am completely enamored with. Please join me for this highly informative, encouraging and historic interview. (Do ya think we should mention that we always knew it was women?) Now to get the rest of the world to buy into Konner’s treatise.
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ABOUT THE AUTHOR:
Melvin Konner, M.D., is the Samuel Candler Dobbs Professor in the Department of Anthropology and the Program in Neuroscience and Behavioral Biology at Emory University. He is the author of The Tangled Wing, Becoming a Doctor, and Medicine at the Crossroads, among other books.
WOMEN AFTER ALL
Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy
by Melvin Konner, M.D.
“Insightful and bound to spark controversy.” ~Kirkus Reviews
“Konner’s treatise is carefully referenced and clearly written throughout, but it’s the intricately constructed argument that gender identities are rooted in biology that treads new ground.” ~Publishers Weekly
“A compelling and thought-provoking read for men and women alike.” ~Lisa Sanders, M.D., associate professor, Yale School of Medicine
“A sparkling, thought-provoking account of sexual differences.” ~Jared Diamond, professor of geography at UCLA and Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Guns, Germs, and Steel
“Engagingly written and persuasively argued, Women After All shows how an acknowledgment of human nature combined with a long view of history can advance the human condition.” ~Steven Pinker, Johnstone Professor of Psychology, Harvard University, and author of The Better Angels of Our Nature
With his latest book, Melvin Konner, M.D., the celebrated author of The Tangled Wing and one of our leading authorities on biological anthropology, turns his attention to the relationship between the sexes. In
WOMEN AFTER ALL: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy [W. W. Norton & Company, March 9, 2015, $26.95 hardcover],
Konner brings his keen insight and sparkling wit to bear on the increasingly widespread debate about the future role of women (and men) in human society.
With gentleness and humor, Konner examines our deep biological past, and the sexual behavior of our feathered and furry cousins, to determine how the males and females of the animal kingdom interact with one another, using his findings to brilliantly expose how we as a race have come to this point and why our patriarchal ways can’t last. Then he turns his attention to humans, examining male and female behavior over the preceding centuries, building his case that women are, after all, biologically more adept at dealing with the challenges of the modern world.
Women, notes Konner, are fundamentally pragmatic as well as caring, cooperative as well as competitive, skilled in getting their own egos out of the way, deft in managing people without putting them on the defensive. They are builders rather than destroyers. Above all, women can carry on the business of a complex world in ways that are more focused, efficient, deliberate, and constructive than men can, because women are not continually distracted by impulses that can lead to sex and violence.
Konner brings a wealth of specialized knowledge and a unique perspective to this timely topic. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, the renowned anthropologist, primatologist, and author of Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding, has said: “Women After All is astonishingly insightful. . . . It is not always males who are the problem. At issue is the utterly ruthless processes of sexual selection which in humans are magnified still further by patriarchal ideologies. Women After All provides a richly informed, up-to-the-minute and sensible exploration of a highly charged topic. It is the best available examination of how and why men and women differ and how twenty-first-century humans can use this knowledge to forge a better world.”
Perhaps the author sums up the value of WOMEN AFTER ALL best in his introduction: “You might say that this book will have something to offend almost everyone. But it will be worth the trouble if it contributes in the least way to women attaining their rightful place after all, and if I convince a few of you that the world will be better when that happens than it has ever been in the past. It is not the end of men, but it is the end of male supremacy, and it is very nearly here.”
TITLE: WOMEN AFTER ALL: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy
AUTHOR: Melvin Konner, M.D.
ISBN: 978-0-393-23996-6
PUBLICATION DATE: March 9, 2015
PRICE: $26.95 hardcover
PAGES: 400
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About the Author: Leslie Carol Botha is an Author, publisher, radio talk show host and internationally recognized expert on women’s hormone cycles. Social/political activist on Gardasil the HPV vaccine for adolescent girls. Co-author of “Understanding Your Mood, Mind and Hormone Cycle.” Honorary advisory board member for the Foundation for the Study of Cycles and member of the Society for Menstrual Cycle Research.
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TLB recommends you visit Leslie at HOLY HORMONES JOURNAL for more pertinent articles and information.
See featured article and read comments HERE
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