Why is Sex Fun?, Jared Diamond
Why is Sex Fun?, Jared Diamond
List: $15.99 | Sale: $11.20
Club: $7.99

Why is Sex Fun?
The Evolution of Human Sexuality

Author: Jared Diamond

Narrator: L.J. Ganser

Unabridged: 5 hr 17 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 06/08/2018


Synopsis

To us humans the sex lives of many animals seem weird. In fact, by comparison with all the other animals, we are the ones with the weird sex lives. How did that come to be?Just count our bizarre ways. We are the only social species to insist on carrying out sex privately. Stranger yet, we have sex at any time, even when the female can't be fertilized (for example, because she is already pregnant, post-menopausal, or between fertile cycles). A human female doesn't know her precise time of fertility and certainly doesn't advertise it to human males by the striking color changes, smells, and sounds used by other female mammals.Why do we differ so radically in these and other important aspects of our sexuality from our closest ancestor, the apes? Why does the human female, virtually alone among mammals go through menopause? Why does the human male stand out as one of the few mammals to stay (often or usually) with the female he impregnates, to help raise the children that he sired? Why is the human penis so unnecessarily large?There is no one better qualified than Jared Diamond-renowned expert in the fields of physiology and evolutionary biology and award-winning author-to explain the evolutionary forces that operated on our ancestors to make us sexually different. With wit and a wealth of fascinating examples, he explains how our sexuality has been as crucial as our large brains and upright posture in our rise to human status.

About Jared Diamond

JARED DIAMOND has been the national baseball writer for the Wall Street Journal since 2017. Prior to that, he spent a season as the Journal’s Yankees beat writer and three seasons as their Mets beat writer. In his current role, he leads the newspaper’s baseball coverage. This is his first book. 


Reviews

Goodreads review by Jenbebookish on May 07, 2013

While sort of dating somebody that was very, very ill suited for me...so much that I was absolutely certain that we had no future, he would never be introduced to my family, et cetera et cetera, I really started being interested in the subject of sex. Attraction. The difference between women and me......more

Goodreads review by ☘Misericordia☘ on May 29, 2020

Nature sure knows how to have fun: - the battle of the sexes, - sexual cannibalism, - fascinating stuff about the intricacies of lactation, - a lot of other anthropological discourse.......more

Writing as a Jared Diamond fan, I am sorry to report that Why is Sex Fun? is a letdown. His central hypothesis is that sex is applied selfish genetics, without so naming it.He argues that the act of procreation in a given specie is predictable given knowns such as is the relative energy investment i......more

Goodreads review by Daisy on December 18, 2023

Not sure this book answered the question it poses but it answered the question of why do humans have sex more than they need to? (ie without the aim of getting pregnant). However, this was not definitively answered more a choose your own reason in the vein of the Ian Livingstone books. Here’s the in......more

Goodreads review by Charity on April 18, 2016

Why is sex fun? Who the eff cares??? It just IS...if you're doing it right, that is. Ha! I thought the book had a lot of promise, but it failed to deliver on many, many levels. Diamond's lack of footnotes really irked me and I was left questioning a lot of his research. I mean sure, learning about th......more