Eve

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NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • WOMEN’S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION FINALIST • THE REAL ORIGIN OF OUR SPECIES: a myth-busting, eye-opening landmark account of how humans evolved, offering a paradigm shift in our thinking about what the female body is, how it came to be, and how this evolution still shapes all our lives today
 
“A page-turning whistle-stop tour of mammalian development that begins in the Jurassic Era, Eve recasts the traditional story of evolutionary biology by placing women at its center…. The book is engaging, playful, erudite, discursive and rich with detail.” 
—Sarah Lyall, The New York Times

“A smart, funny, scientific deep-dive into the power of a woman’s body, Eve surprises, educates, and emboldens.”
—Bonnie Garmus, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Lessons in Chemistry
 
How did the female body drive 200 million years of human evolution? • Why do women live longer than men? • 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? • Is sexism useful for evolution? • And why, seriously why, do women have to sweat through our sheets every night when we hit menopause?
 
These questions are producing some truly exciting science – and in Eve, with boundless curiosity and sharp wit, Cat Bohannon covers the past 200 million years to explain the specific science behind the development of the female sex: “We need a kind of user’s manual for the female mammal. A no-nonsense, hard-hitting, seriously researched (but readable) account of what we are. How female bodies evolved, how they work, what it really means to biologically be a woman. Something that would rewrite the story of womanhood. This book is that story. We have to put the female body in the picture. If we don’t, it’s not just feminism that’s compromised. Modern medicine, neurobiology, paleoanthropology, even evolutionary biology all take a hit when we ignore the fact that half of us have breasts. So it’s time we talk about breasts. Breasts, and blood, and fat, and vaginas, and wombs—all of it. How they came to be and how we live with them now, no matter how weird or hilarious the truth is.”
 
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. Picking up where Sapiens left off, Eve will completely change what you think you know about evolution and why Homo sapiens has become such a successful and dominant species.“The high-velocity, high-impact Eve, part owner’s manual for the female body…part sweeping saga of mammalian history; and part clapback against the tendency of much evolutionary thought to place men, and their furry mancestors, at the center of the action….Bohannon has a poet’s voice…and a reporter’s eye. Eve is an endless source of dinner-party trivia, much of it inappropriate for actual dinner parties….Eve also suggests a new way of thinking about one’s body: as a thing of time, built on a foundation developed over millions of years…Powerful…A love letter to the ancient, creaking wonder that is evolution.”
—Cindi Leive, The New York Times Book Review

“Eve erases any lingering misconception about the centrality of women, giving us a detailed look at women’s biology….The book brims with unexpected insights, described with a lovely mixture of scientific veracity and novelistic flair.”
—David P. Barash, Wall Street Journal

“Bohannon presents nothing less than a new history of the species by examining human evolution through the lens of womankind. It’s a provocative corrective that will answer dozens of questions you’ve always had — and even more you never thought to ask.”
—The New York Times

“Bohannon offers a refreshing and lively corrective to a story that has focused mainly on male evolution.”
—Josie Glausiusz, Nature

“Bohannon calls on her astounding disciplinary range to tell this epic tale. Her writing ripples with references from literature, film studies, biochemistry, cognitive science and anthropology….The footnotes alone, which are particularly learned, irreverent and funny, are a masterpiece….She is bold when speaking against abortion restrictions, the gender wage gap, sex essentialism…and chastity laws. There’s also a grungy lushness to her prose that celebrates saliva, cervical and laryngeal mucus, buttocks… and fat.” 
—Kate Womersley, The Guardian

“A page-turning whistle-stop tour of mammalian development that begins in the Jurassic Era, Eve recasts the traditional story of evolutionary biology by placing women at its center….Timely…The book is engaging, playful, erudite, discursive and rich with detail….Replete with interesting, far-afield facts, [and] many tucked inside footnotes.”
—Sarah Lyall, The New York Times

“Fascinating…An impressive feat…A book that is at once highly complex…and very readable, while avoiding the behavioral economics pop-science trap of drawing too-neat conclusions….Existing as a woman in our increasingly atomized world can be isolating in ways that are hard to even identify. Beyond making me gasp aloud in wonder, Bohannon’s book was an unexpected antidote, delivering a profound sense of kinship with every other woman who’s ever existed (plus those various Eve ancestors).”
—Nora Biette-Timmons, Jezebel

“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
 
“A smart, funny, scientific deep-dive into the power of a woman’s body, Eve surprises, educates, and emboldens. Who runs the world? Girls!”
—Bonnie Garmus, #1 New York Times best-selling author of Lessons in Chemistry

“Lively, comprehensive…[and] provocative….Bohannon’s book is a joy to read: It’s replete with beautiful language…and humor….It’s also an informative, intriguing…call to view our human story through the evolution of women and the essential contributions that the female body has made toward the genesis of humanity.”
—Emily Cataneo, Undark

“A capacious investigation of women throughout time….Bohannon…creates a jaunty, digressive, and often whimsical tale examining the origins of some defining features of womanhood….Fascinating…Prodigious research informs a spirited history of humanity.”
—Kirkus Reviews (starred)

“Bohannon offers a bracing corrective to male-centric evolutionary accounts. She balances scientific rigor with entertaining prose….It’s an illuminating and fresh take on how human evolution unfolded.” 
—Publishers Weekly

“A vast, meticulously researched, and…entertaining work….Amongst the comprehensively researched facts and brilliant explanatory examples…Bohannon’s wit and humor prove…effective, creating an enjoyable and enlightening read….She demonstrates eloquent storytelling skills when evoking different eras and conditions in which our ancestral Eves lived.”
—BookBrowseCAT BOHANNON is a researcher and author with a Ph.D. from Columbia University in the evolution of narrative and cognition. Her essays and poems have appeared in Scientific American, Mind, Science Magazine, The Best American Nonrequired Reading, The Georgia Review, The Story Collider, and Poets Against the War. She lives with her family in Seattle.

1. In her introduction, Cat Bohannon quotes Susan Sontag, who wrote in her essay for Annie Leibovitz’s book Women, “any large-scale picturing of women belongs to the ongoing story of how women are presented, and how they are invited to think of themselves. [As such, it raises] the question of women—there is no equivalent ‘question of men.’ Men, unlike women, are not a work in progress.” Talk about the way that quote makes you feel. Do you think it rings true in your own life? In the lives of the women you know?

2. Bohannon grounds each chapter with an Eve, an evolutionary great-great-grandmother from whom we have all evolved. How did that organizational method feel to you as the reader? Was it helpful to get to know the various animals from whom we’ve evolved as humans? Did you have trouble imagining these species as ancestors?

3. What misconceptions about the female body did you confront while reading this book?

4. Have you noticed any of the evolutionary traits Cat Bohannon refers to in Eve in yourself or in women around you? If so, which ones?

5. Anyone who has struggled with fertility issues can attest that getting pregnant is not as easy as it was purported to be in middle school health class. The author even seems baffled at how there came to be 8.1 billion people inhabiting the earth when there’s only a 9 percent chance of conception every month. In what ways did humans evolve to boost their chance of proliferation? To what do we owe our success as a species?

6. Our hominin Eves developed gynecology by creating a cooperative female society. Bonobos have demonstrated giving birth with other females present in the nest. What are some ways a cooperative female society has helped you in your life? What are ways you contribute to a cooperative female society in your community?

7. Humans aren’t the only species that face rape culture. Talk about some of the evidence that exists in other species that guard females against reproduction when they don’t want to procreate. How did that make you feel about the prolific rape problem among humans?

8. The author enumerates several ways the female body communicates with other humans without words or language. What are some of those ways? Have you felt or seen this wordless communication in your own body or in other women?

9. In the chapter on menopause, Bohannan lays out the puzzle that exists in modern humans, which is that women go through menopause and live another 25 to 30 percent of their lives without being able to reproduce. What did you think of the evolutionary reason for this? What were some times when the elder women in your life guided you with their memories and lived experience?

10. Why did humans evolve to have such big brains that went on to reinforce sexist social structures? And why are women, in many ways, more invested in protecting sexist norms than men?

11. The last line of the book is a call to action urging women to stop giving men all our power. What are some ways, either that the author illuminates in the book or that you’ve thought of, that we can take back our power?

12. Cat Bohannan begins her book stressing that “female bodies aren’t just male bodies with ‘extra stuff’ (fat, breasts, uteri). Nor are testicles and ovaries hot swappable. Being sexed permeates every major feature of our mammalian bodies and the lives we live inside them, for mouse and human alike.” But she also writes, “It’s clear that trans women are women.” Does Bohannan do a good enough job of exploring the possible evolutionary history of other bodies beyond cisgender women?

13. After reading the book, did you feel more of a kinship to your own body or a better understanding of the women in your life? Did the history and the science in this book serve to illustrate just how little we’ve been taught about the female body up until now?

14. Due to a combination of racism, sexism, ableism, and reduced public support for women’s health, it’s more dangerous for American women to be pregnant now than it has been in the last hundred years. What do you find most frustrating about this backslide? What are ways society can combat it?

15. As we think about the future, what evolutionary adaptations do you think female human bodies will make over the next several thousand years?

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