Eve

How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution

By: Cat Bohannon

Narrated by: Cat Bohannon

Length: 15 hrs and 54 mins

Publisher's summary

An ambitious, eye-opening, myth-busting, and groundbreaking history of the evolution of the female body, by a brilliant new researcher and writer

Why do women live longer than men? Why do women have menopause? Why are women more likely to get Alzheimer’s? Why do girls score better at every academic subject than boys until puberty, when suddenly their scores plummet? And does the female brain really exist?

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.

Picking up where Sapiens left off, Eve is a landmark book, offering a true paradigm shift in our thinking about what the female body is and why it matters.

PLEASE NOTE: When you purchase this title, the accompanying PDF will be available in your Audible Library along with the audio.

©2023 Cat Bohannon (P)2023 Random House Audio

Critic reviews

“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

Highly educational, extremely interesting and witty.

This book is a whirlwind tour of the genetic and cultural evolution of our species evolution viewed through the lenses of challenges presented by multiple Eves - the prototypical mothers on different branches of the evolution tree. It makes a strong case that it is the interaction of mothers with its offspring led to development of language, story telling and tool use.

A New Brilliant Understandable Evolutionary Story

Finally! A scientific account of how humans actually developed. And it is completely readable, totally understanding and brightly told. What a relief, a joy to be where my story as a woman is front and center. Brilliant research, memorable, and a view that balances a skewed perception of how The human race developed

Fascinating!

Loved everything about this experience: the new facts I discovered, the author’s sense of humor, her reading voice… more books please!

Great book!

As a gynecologist myself, I so enjoyed learning about the evolution of women! Thank you, Cat Bohannon!

Thought Provoking

Dr Bohannon lays out an alternative stoty on the sexes in human evolution. At times this story reaches past what we have evidence for but it is a story worth exploring nontheless. Eve is a gem in the pop-anthropology genre.

I’ve read a lot of science books, yet this one surprised me so many times.

This book is stuffed full of amazing information about mothers and children. I plan to listen to it again so I can absorb the information more completely. It’s highly entertaining as well as thought provoking and surprising.

Must read!

Filled with fascinating facts about the female body and how it functions! Loved the writing style, was ready to read another book by Cat after. Couldn’t get enough

Fascinating

Well researched, well communicated, and thoughtfully applied to modern political and social situations. A worthwhile read.

So great!

Now let’s stop researching and start feeding women and children high quality food. Hoping Cat will follow up with a book on malnutrition (including how diet culture is malnutrition and a person can get too many calories and still be malnourished)

Omg. Must-read of the year.

Someone said, there is this new book. Ok. And then I went into a book store and saw it. Ok. And then I listened to it on Audible. Wow. I ended up hooked through every chapter, even the hard topics. It is an easy read, and it's not dumbed-down science: it's just simple and patient storytelling. This is one of those rare books that is both as entertaining as pop fiction as it is deep with the latest state of science. Cat has managed to tell a story of the modern human body and the many struggles it took to get here, and then goes beyond into how we can be better to ourselves, to each other, and even the planet. It talks about the financial sense of investing in women in society to uplift all of us. It talks about how if we want the best for our future generations we have a lot of work to do. Bravo.