I had forgotten just how good this book actually is. I’ve read most of the popular stuff Diamond has written and enjoyed all of them. My favourite is Guns, Germs and Steel, but this one is also very good.Although this one has a particularly fine title I have to say that it does make me want to ask another equally important question – why are there so few really good television documentaries that come out of the USA. I mean, there was Cosmos, which was mind-blowing, but there have been few that r...

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 men's approaches to it, the difference between pure physical attraction and what people call "chemistry." Pure, simple sexual attraction and then the kind of attraction that develops. While ultimately I

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.

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 in the developing egg and what is the certainty of the embryo being the genetic product of either parent. The reader is assumed to have a background in evolution theory and this book applies that infor...

This was a mostly tedious book to get through. The only thing that stopped it from being 1 star was a few interesting facts and details that bumped the rating.

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 the number of hermaphroditic fashion models really boosted my self-esteem, but hello? Source please! I don't have time to go digging around through his entire bibliography looking for relevance. Ultimat...

I'll admit I cam into this expecting sociology with a little bit of biology, but instead I got the reverse. There are a lot of comparisons drawn between humans and other species, as an evolutionary explanation for our sexual evolution is attempted. I think not including any observations on how lgbtqia people may fit into the picture is an oversight, but overall this was an informative book.

in case if you frown upon the title, I would like to highlight that the author is a biologist, he is neither a saint nor a sinner. biology as a science has a sort of philosophical completeness that the physics, the most fundamental of all science doesn’t possess. biology can answer both “how” and “why” questions. molecular biology and/or genetics do answer the question of “how”, for example, they can tell you the step by step process of “how” a living being dies, but they will definitely fail to...

It seems that Jared Diamond got better and better with every book he wrote. With practice he got exceptionally good at making comparisons between species, cultures, etc. He also developed a better focus on the subject with every book.However this book was written before any of that. While it is easy to read, it contains little info and has strange examples. It also alludes too often to the author's sex life in a "Look at me I'm a successfully married man with a sex life...horay!" way. Diamond tr...

In short, I may describe this book as another diamond from Jared's bag of gems, where he told us a story of human sexuality from the evolutionary perspective. In this book, he described that the attributes of human sexuality e.g. concealed sex, monogamous society, recreational sex, non-existence of male lactation were developed because of specific evolutionary reasons. More interestingly, even the evolution of female menopause is a deceptive game of evolution to make more by making less. He also...

Shame on Mr. Diamond for luring me in with this clever title. What this book really is is a scholarly tome for the serious anthropology student. It is interesting that, when it comes to sex, humans do a lot of things very differently than even our closest animal cousins. The book looks at why men have nipples, why humans continue to have sex even during pregnancy when there's no chance of additional procreation, and how various species evolved with obvious or hidden signs of ovulation (complete

This book was fascinating and so engaging and easy to read for a book based in biology. In it, Jared Diamond brings up numerous facts about human sexuality that we all take for granted. Humans have sex for fun whether or not they are fertile, at any time of the month or year. Human females experience a distinct decline and then abrupt stop in fertility around middle age. Women usually have little idea of when they might be ovulating (unless they are using some form of modern technology to tell t...

Who is the the animal with the weirdest sex life? Yup, human sex is WEIRD because we do it for fun, anytime, even when we're not ovulating or fertile, in private, and females have menopause. These points are made in the preface and the first chapter. After that, the content is strictly for anthropologists or cocktail party chat.The titillating title leads one to expect a book on humans, especially given his physiology background. But the book is written for students interested in how & why anima...

Jared Diamond does not posses Carl Sagan's gift of enriching all he writes with a grand sense of poetic wonder; he also lacks the verve and wit of a science writer like Phil Plait. Diamond's books, however, are absolutely essential for those seeking to understand our universe and ourselves because he invariably chooses such fascinating topics. From the development of civilizations in his masterpiece GUNS, GERMS, AND STEEL, to their potential decline in COLLAPSE, Diamond leaves one with a deeper

…and why is that?I read this whole book, cover to cover, by Jared Diamond, whose previous book that I'd read features in my top 10 non-fiction books of all time, to find out the answer to "why do we do it?" But, alas, in vain. I learnt about the sexual practices and reproduction methods of baboon, gorilla, chimps, pigeons, frogs, elephants, ants, flies, and million other animals and birds whose name I heard for the first time, but didn't learn why is it fun for us, the humans, to have sex? Every...

3.5 starsI must admit that I would never have picked this book up if I hadn't come to know of Jared Diamond's brilliant writing in his other book: Guns, Germs and Steel. Although human sexuality is an endlessly fascinating topic, books attempting to scrutinize it are all too often filled with nothing more than bumbling rhetorical questions and weird, irrelevant anecdotes. So knowing how amazing Guns, Germs and Steel was, I was fairly confident Jared Diamond would not disappoint in Why Is Sex Fun...

I was enjoying it up until he started discussing human lactation which immediately revealed that he knows just about nothing about the subject. "Human lactation is energetically very expensive," and nursing mothers eat like men?This is hardly the same as eating like an active man: "Studies have shown that most healthy breastfeeding women maintain an abundant milk supply while taking in 1800-2200 (or more) calories per day." "Breastfeeding your baby, on average, burns 200-500 calories per day" -

During the month or so this book was in my house, my husband with his unique sense of humor, kept cheekily asking me if I "knew why it was fun yet". And the book is now done and I still can't answer why. Pleasure, orgasm, etc. was never addressed and this book is absolutely incorrectly titled. The subtitle "The Evolution of Human Sexuality" is more accurate, and a better format would have been a long article or series of short essays in a larger collection of essays - some of which would actuall...

I read this book thanks to Blinkist.WHAT THE FUCK did I just read?!?The key message in this book:Sex isn’t just a recreational activity or a means to procreate. Rather, it’s a set of behaviors, some determined by our genes and some stemming from seemingly odd counter-evolutionary choices, that offer a profound insight into our evolution, our society and our rise to the top of the food chain. Suggested further reading: Sex at Dawn by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda JetháSex At Dawn argues that the i...

Not really sure why I read this since it's not for school reading but this was informational and could be good for people looking into learning more about sex ed or about evolution.

You get the feeling reading this that the author has a fair amount of potential. He promises a lot, and sort of delivers. The most interesting bit for me was about why there might be selection pressure for menopause. (This may be disturbing for some to read.) Basically, for most of recent evolutionary history, as a woman gets older, childbirth is more likely to kill her. Because human children are helpless for so long, this will likely kill some of her children too, if she's given birth at all r...

Thought-provoking across the board and convincing in some places, Diamond makes a evolutionary biology argument that posits part of human distinctiveness arises from our unusual reproductive characteristics: concealed ovulation, recreational sex, and female menopause. Diamond's meditations on how menopause may have been selected for and why men don't breastfeed their children were compelling and carefully argued. When he ventured into the territory of human social arrangements; however, Diamond

If you picked this book up thinking it was a 150 page Cosmo article you sure were in for something else. Physiological expert Jared Diamond never fails to answer the questions that everyone asks but quickly dismisses. For a book based on human biology Diamond has the ability to make things simple and understandable for the dedicated reader. Sure he's no Carl Sagan, unlocking the secrets to the universe (unless you're reading Collapse, where he unlocks the secrets to the future of humanity), but

I always enjoy Jared Diamond's books and this was no exception. It can't be compared to Guns and Germs and Steel because it lacks the depth and breathtaking perspective of that book. Nevertheless, it is an intriguing exploration of the evolution of human sexuality and makes a strong case that we are the animal with the weirdest sex life.Diamond explores questions I had never previously considered, such as why men don't lactate. That question is of itself interesting but I also found myself refle...

I'm adding this book because I read it as a part of my undergradute anthropological coursework. Ironically, the course it was assigned for was not taught by an anthropologist (it was taught by a botanist).The best I can offer you, unfortunately, in terms of this work can be found here: 1. http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2013/01...2. http://www.imediaethics.org/News/170/...3. http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles...

This is the first evolutionary biology book I have ever read and I am mostly new to the subject, so I don't have much to say whether it lacks scientific rigor or not, but it definitely caught my eye and lured me to read more about the subject( neglecting the evident reason that I am a male undergrad!). His arguments sounds convincing to me as long as they matched my intuitions but I actually never looked for detailed scientific references of his claims.The writing is attractive enough for a read...

It’s so much fun for the same reason that getting smashed is so much fun – you’re not in a normal mental state. Who in their right mind would want to stimulate a part of their body until it swells to bursting with blood, then stick it into a wet and slimy part of another person’s body and gyrate it about until some fluid is released? I think women should have had their vaginas situated on the left shoulder, with men’s penises a specially adapted forefinger. Then you could just politely and hygie...

4 STARS"Why are humans one of the few species to have sex in private? Why are human females the only mammals to go through menopause? Why is the human penis so unnecessarily large? There is no more knowledgeable authority than the award-winning author of THE THIRD CHIMPANZEE to answer these intriguing questions. Here is a delightfully entertaining and enlightening look at the unique sex lives of humans." (From Amazon)A nice quick interesting read on comparing sex lives of mammals and animals.

My ratings of books on Goodreads are solely a crude ranking of their utility to me, and not an evaluation of literary merit, entertainment value, social importance, humor, insightfulness, scientific accuracy, creative vigor, suspensefulness of plot, depth of characters, vitality of theme, excitement of climax, satisfaction of ending, or any other combination of dimensions of value which we are expected to boil down through some fabulous alchemy into a single digit.

A lighter read from Jared Diamond, but not as the title might suggest. The author of Collapse and The Third Chimpanzee now provides us with a look into human sexuality from an evolutionary perspective. He makes reference to research that allow us to investigate the origins of our sexual behaviour and our cultural attitudes towards forming partnership. This is an interesting way, one could say obvious, to complete the study of the spectrum of our sexuality.