Reviews
Milam uses the topic of female choice as a lens through which to view intellectual, disciplinary, and social developments in the life sciences... An invaluable synthesis for historians of biology, scientists, and those with a popular interest in animal studies.
The discussion of how female choice in humans was treated throughout this time period is especially illuminating, as is the contention that there has never been a lull in interest on this topic. Highly recommended.
Excellent and fascinating history... Anyone interested in our ambivalence over the degree to which humanity’s roots lay in its animal nature will benefit from reading this book.
Milam demonstrates that sexual selection has been contentious and politically loaded ever since Charles Darwin first proposed it... An accessible and important contribution to the history of an active topic of biological research today.
By taking on the historical relationship between gender and evolution, humans and animals, and science and social analysis, Milam's study makes an important and fascinating contribution to numerous historical sub-disciplines.
A carefully researched, fascinating history of rich detail on a part of evolutionary biology that has so far garnered little attention among historians, scientists, and the public. This is a thoughtful book that appeals to anyone with an interest in animal behavior or the uneasy relationship between evolution science and the study of human social relationships.
An essential read for anyone interested in the rigorous treatment of evolutionary sexual behavior and its implications.
Milam's detailed attention to the different ways in which sexual selection was conceptualized and the diverse research programs that it motivated, as well as to the disciplinary disputes about the research and its history, reveals a fascinating and complex world.
In Milam’s hands, the issue of female choice becomes a useful sampling device for revealing the distinctive methods and values of biologists of different stripes as they contended for intellectual jurisdiction over evolutionary theory and what came to be called ‘organismal biology.’ This is a fresh and fascinating book.
Book Details
Introduction
1. Beauty and the Beast: Darwin, Wallace, and the Animal-Human Boundary
2. Progressive Desire: Rational Evolution after the Great War
3. Branching Out, Scaling Up: American Experiments on
Introduction
1. Beauty and the Beast: Darwin, Wallace, and the Animal-Human Boundary
2. Progressive Desire: Rational Evolution after the Great War
3. Branching Out, Scaling Up: American Experiments on Behavior
4. Courtly Behavior: The Rituals of British Zoologists
5. A Science of Rare Males: The Genetics of Populations in the Long 1960s
6. Selective History: Writing Female Choice into Organismal Biology
Conclusion
Acknowledgments
Notes
Essay on Sources
Index