Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters: From Dating, Shopping, and Praying to Going to War and Becoming a Billionaire--Two Evolutionary Psychologists Explain Why We Do What WeDo

Fascinating

I found this book completely engrossing. A must read for everyone, particularly single women. It explains, based on extensive scientific reserch and observation, many of the behaviors, both men's and women's, that we have long wondered about.

3 out of 3 people found this review helpful.

We still think like cave people...

This is one of the best scholarly books I have ever read. A solid treatise on the state of Evolutionary Psychology today that is unflinching and certainly not politically correct. Everything from sexual behavior to why we steal and kill and go to war.

For those who look around and wonder why people do some of the strange things we do in everyday life, this book will make you say "OK, I get it now". Occasionally there are some far-fetched ideas, and the book doesn't have all the answers (especially were explaining lesbians is concerned) but overall, it would be hard for me to think that someone could read this book and not have at least some of their ideas about humanity changed in some way.

This book is my new Bible.

2 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

nonsense

I picked this book up while browsing mainly because of the catchy title, and read a great deal of it. The book is a series of soundbites to explain human behavior (and even biology) today against the backdrop of evolution. Much of what I read was nonsense and some of it was insulting with a political agenda masquerading as science. I sense that because Kanazawa is on the faculty of the London School of Ecnonomics this may be more a case of the emporer's new clothes rather than rigorous serious science.

2 out of 5 people found this review helpful.

lay-person's introduction to evolutionary psychology

This is a fascinating, lay-person's introduction to evolutionary psychology. Screw Freud, Darwin's the one who REALLY holds the answers to why we do what we do. I read this in two days.

1 out of 1 people found this review helpful.

Acceptance is the first step

Anyone who has written a negative review about this book has not accepted the reality of who (as men and women) we really are. We are animals. It is Uptopian to believe otherwise.

1 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

Evolutionary Pseudo-psychology

I am mortified that by purchasing this book, I might have supported the "research" of pseudo-scientist Satoshi Kanazawa, the principle author. I urge potential buyers to at least google Kanazawa, whose research shows that African countries are entrenched in poverty because of the low IQs of Africans, that women (regardless of race or culture) want to look like Barbie (the blond one) and that men enjoy pornography because their feeble brains can't distinguish between porn and the real thing. I will leave it to the adventurous reader to find the even more ridiculous theory for why women don't like porn. Kanazawa begins with tenuous assumptions of what IS and uses some tricky methods of backwards induction and guesses of what WAS to explain WHY. He combines nuggets of research conducted by people who seem to understand the scientific method with his own half-baked ideas to reveal his true bigotry. Please, don't fall for the catchy title like I did. Kanazawa is trying to bring eugenics and misogyny back into legitimate scientific discourse, and while I am all for freedom of speech, I sure wish I hadn't bought the book.

1 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

Poor job

Week book, disappointing, the Author does not give answers and/or explain clearly the subjects, lacks of substance. I think, Kanazawa deep down knew this book will not be good. In the Preface, he mentions that the book was his partner's idea 'Alan S. Miller' and that before his death his partner was the one completing the first draft of some chapters but Kanazawa ended up reworking all the chapters his partner left. The title of the book was not even his own idea, it was Marian Lizzi an Editor, also at the end of his Acknowledgments he calls himself 'a delusional man' Saying all of this, how can you trust this book will be of any worth? as a matter of fact, how/who can trust having Kanazawa as an Assistant Professor or as a tenured Reader? Kanazawa is definitively in my NOT to read list.

1 out of 4 people found this review helpful.

Caught my interest but...

I read half of this book and lost interest. I would not recommend it new; buy it used.

0 out of 2 people found this review helpful.

No text was provided for this review.

No text was provided for this review.

No text was provided for this review.

No text was provided for this review.

No text was provided for this review.

No text was provided for this review.

No text was provided for this review.