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The Score: The Science of the Male Sex Drive

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The Score: The Science of the Male Sex Drive

Paperback(Reprint)

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Overview

A smart, witty, and fresh look at the male side of the male-female relationship from a science writer at The Philadelphia Inquirer.

In The Score, Faye Flam examines how the desire to "score" has profoundly shaped males over millions of years. Sweeping from the origin of the sexes to the sexual foibles of twenty-first-century humans, Flam, a science writer at The Philadelphia Inquirer, shows how a small difference in the size of the first sperm and eggs resulted in an evolutionary tradeoff that has affected both males and females. Because males of most species invest less in reproduction than females, they have to invest more up front to get sex-whether by jumping through hoops to prove that they'll be a good father, fighting to near death with rivals, or paying a couple thousand dollars for a class on how to pick up chicks à la the pickup artists in Neil Strauss's The Game.

Within this tug-of-war context, Flam explores a wide range of male behaviors and courtship strategies and ultimately reveals that males have been shaped by competing for the preferences of the female sex. But after all this sex-propelled evolution, we're still stuck in a troublesome suspension between monogamy and promiscuity-and it's this tension that explains the contradictions of the modern man.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781583333495
Publisher:	Penguin Publishing Group
Publication date:	06/11/2009
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	224
Product dimensions:	5.56(w) x 8.28(h) x 0.59(d)
Age Range:	14 Years

About the Author

Faye Flam has been covering science for The Philadelphia Inquirer since 1995. In June 2005, she started writing “Carnal Knowledge”, a weekly column about the science of sex. She has also written for New Scientist, Science, and The Economist, and her search for a good science story has taken her everywhere from the South Pole to Greenland to NASA’s zero-g plane. A graduate of California Institute of Technology, Flam was recently a Knight-Wallace journalism fellow at the University of Michigan. She lives in Philadelphia.

Preface ix

1 The Mystery: What Pickup Artists Reveal About the Natural World 1

2 Let There Be Sexes: Why the Origin of the Sexes Changed Everything 7

3 Competing for Females: How the Quest For Sex Made Men Different From Women 19

4 Sex Drive: Why Some Males Will Risk Life and Limb For Sex 27

5 The Genetics of Men: How the Y Chromosome Came About and What it Tells us About the Future of Men 43

6 Private Parts: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Phallology 61

7 Testosterone: How to Make a Man, and Some Things That Can Go Awry in the Process 77

8 The Secret Lives of Sperm: What Sperm Want and How They Can Manipulate Both Men and Women 93

9 Are Men Scum?: Pornography and Casual Sex in Perspective 101

10 Beauty and Beasts: How the Quest For Sex Gave Rise to Beauty 117

11 Alpha and Beta: Sex, Power, and the Decline of the Alpha Male 131

12 Who's Your Daddy?: Fatherly Males and the Sex Appeal of Mr. Mom 143

13 Sexual Outlaws: Homosexuals, Bisexuals, Transsexuals, and the Power of Diversity in the Game of Life 155

14 Why Males are Necessary: Not for Survival, But for Reproduction 175

Conclusion 183

Who We are

Sources and References 187

Index 207

From the B&N Reads Blog

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Editorial Reviews

Faye Flam knows exactly how to make sex scientific and how to make science sexy. She penetrates the mysteries of human and animal passion with great style. (Matt Ridley, author of Genome and The Red Queen)

Matt Ridley

Faye Flam is a very clever writer, smart and witty. She wears her scholarship lightly, stylishly, and with a wink. Men picking up this book hoping for tips on bedding women might at first be disappointed, but if they stick around they might learn the most important pick-up skill of all: To listen. After all, chances are she's smarter than you, and more entertaining. There's no better proof of that than this book. (Mark Bowden, author of Black Hawk Down)

Mark Bowden

Faye Flam provides a fascinating tour of how the quest for sex has shaped the evolution of human and nature in all of its staggeringly delightful forms. Written with a deft touch and humorous hand, The Score is anchored in solid science of sexuality. It takes readers on a journey of insights that ranges from the tactics of pick-up artists to some surprising benefits of testosterone. Faye Flam has a genius for spanning different scientific disciplines, and bringing out the hidden gems contained in each. I couldn't put the book down. (David M. Buss, author of The Evolution of Desire)

David M. Buss

Offering a fascinating look at everything from transsexual snakes and the long corkscrew penises of ducks to club pickup techniques and the connection between male scum and scum that is male, Faye Flam ranges broadly over many disciplines to show how sexual strivings and strategies have shaped not only us, but virtually the whole animal kingdom. Whether you're interested in cads or cod, The Score will provide you with scores of compelling, often counterintuitive insights. (John Allen Paulos, professor of mathematics at Temple University, and author of Innumeracy and Irreligion )

John Allen Paulos

The Score: The Science of the Male Sex Drive

The Score: The Science of the Male Sex Drive

Paperback(Reprint)

Paperback(Reprint)

Related collections and offers

Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Table of Contents

Customer Reviews

Related collections and offers

Overview

Product Details

About the Author

Table of Contents

Related Subjects

Customer Reviews