★ 2023-07-07
A capacious investigation of women throughout time.
Bohannon, who holds a doctorate in the study of the evolution of narrative and cognition, makes an engaging book debut with a sweeping history of the development of women’s bodies over the past 200 million years. Calling evolution “a complicated narrative, with a lot of whimsy and accident,” the author creates a jaunty, digressive, and often whimsical tale examining the origins of some defining features of womanhood: the ability to produce milk; gestate offspring in the womb; facilitate childbirth; experience menopause, which remains “one of the biggest mysteries in modern biology”; and forge “distinctive, complex, bizarre, and overpowering love bonds.” Bohannon considers how bipedalism, the use of tools, increased brain size, and language related particularly to females. Mammalian milk, she notes, originated more than 200 million years ago in a mammal the size of a field mouse. Placental mammals evolved 67 million to 63 million years ago, this time in a squirrel-like creature, the first to grow eggs inside her body, rather than drop them in a nest. Changes in seeing and hearing resulted from the development of primates, 66 million to 63 million years ago. “Primate Eves” lived in tree canopies for tens of millions of years before diverging to become bipedal, sometime between 5 million and 13 million years ago, a stance that affected pregnancy and childbirth. Bohannon makes a case for females being the first to use tools—“a set of behaviors…to change their relationship with the world around them”—some 2.5 million to 1.8 million years ago, arguing against the idea that innovation has “been driven by groups of men solving man-problems.” Combing scientific literature, the author finds no difference between the brains of men and women. Many species inhabit Bohannon’s fascinating chronicle, as she compares human evolution and life cycle to that of other creatures, great and small.
Prodigious research informs a spirited history of humanity.
The high-velocity, high-impact Eve, part owner’s manual for the female body…part sweeping saga of mammalian history; and part clapback against the tendency of much evolutionary thought to place men, and their furry mancestors, at the center of the action….Bohannon has a poet’s voice…and a reporter’s eye. 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…Powerful…A love letter to the ancient, creaking wonder that is evolution.”
—Cindi Leive, The New York Times Book Review
“Eve erases any lingering misconception about the centrality of women, giving us a detailed look at women’s biology....The book brims with unexpected insights, described with a lovely mixture of scientific veracity and novelistic flair.”
—David P. Barash, Wall Street Journal
"Bohannon presents nothing less than a new history of the species by examining human evolution through the lens of womankind. It’s a provocative corrective that will answer dozens of questions you’ve always had — and even more you never thought to ask."
—The New York Times
"Bohannon offers a refreshing and lively corrective to a story that has focused mainly on male evolution."
—Josie Glausiusz, Nature
"Bohannon calls on her astounding disciplinary range to tell this epic tale. Her writing ripples with references from literature, film studies, biochemistry, cognitive science and anthropology....The footnotes alone, which are particularly learned, irreverent and funny, are a masterpiece....She is bold when speaking against abortion restrictions, the gender wage gap, sex essentialism...and chastity laws. There’s also a grungy lushness to her prose that celebrates saliva, cervical and laryngeal mucus, buttocks... and fat."
—Kate Womersley, The Guardian
"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....Timely...The book is engaging, playful, erudite, discursive and rich with detail....Replete with interesting, far-afield facts, [and] many tucked inside footnotes."
—Sarah Lyall, The New York Times
"Fascinating...An impressive feat...A book that is at once highly complex...and very readable, while avoiding the behavioral economics pop-science trap of drawing too-neat conclusions....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)."
—Nora Biette-Timmons, Jezebel
“Eve is 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.” — Walter Gilbert, Nobel Laureate
"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."
—Neil Shubin, University of Chicago biologist and author of Your Inner Fish
"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."
—Hope Jahren, best-selling author of Lab Girl and Story of More
"This book is almost fantastically interesting. Every few pages there would be some fact I didn't know or an idea that was new to me, and I would ask my wife if she knew, and she’d say, “What? You’re kidding! No!” and we'd end up talking for half an hour, and it would be midnight, and I'd only read 8 pages. So this book took a LONG time to read, but for the best possible reasons. Frankly, I’m writing this while I’m still on page 387, where Cat Bohannon talks about why sex feels good. I definitely plan to finish."
—Charles Mann, best-selling author of 1491
"A smart, funny, scientific deep-dive into the power of a woman’s body, Eve surprises, educates, and emboldens. Who runs the world? Girls!"
—Bonnie Garmus, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Lessons in Chemistry
"Lively, comprehensive...[and] provocative....Bohannon’s book is a joy to read: It’s replete with beautiful language...and humor....It’s also an informative, intriguing...call to view our human story through the evolution of women and the essential contributions that the female body has made toward the genesis of humanity."
—Emily Cataneo, Undark
"A capacious investigation of women throughout time....Bohannon...creates a jaunty, digressive, and often whimsical tale examining the origins of some defining features of womanhood....Fascinating...Prodigious research informs a spirited history of humanity."
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)
"Bohannon offers a bracing corrective to male-centric evolutionary accounts. She balances scientific rigor with entertaining prose....It’s an illuminating and fresh take on how human evolution unfolded."
—Publishers Weekly
"A vast, meticulously researched, and...entertaining work....Amongst the comprehensively researched facts and brilliant explanatory examples...Bohannon's wit and humor prove...effective, creating an enjoyable and enlightening read....She demonstrates eloquent storytelling skills when evoking different eras and conditions in which our ancestral Eves lived."
—BookBrowse
