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theboundlessbookchase's review against another edition
challenging
informative
inspiring
reflective
slow-paced
4.5
likecymbeline's review
5.0
Recommended to me by my Italian Cinema professor, this is definitely one of the best academic books I could recommend a person. It wasn't difficult to read, but you learned a shitload of things from it about... everything, really. He explains how it was women who taught us about time and thus mortality, and it's knowledge of death that spurns us in just about everything and... It covers so much, I can't even begin to say, except that it's definitely worth reading. It's sciencey, it's abstract, and it can probably be applied to every damn aspect of your life.
spitefulgod's review
informative
medium-paced
2.5
The first half of the book is fascinating, but it falls apart once the author gets to his main thesis, which is that women's menstrual cycle matching the lunar cycle led to humans understanding of deep time.
katie_king's review
1.0
From my last status update, on page 129 of 448:
That's it. I'm done. I can't force myself to read another chapter of paternalistic drivel from the privileged viewpoint of an old white American male physician.
While some of his physiology has merit, the conclusions he draws from it do not. Oh, did I mention that he's a devoted Freudian? And that his writing style is so florid, egotistical and repetitive that any random passage could be a contender for the Bulwer-Lytton Prize?
The author promises that if the unwary reader can survive his tortuous prose, that he will Reveal All in Chapter 13. (Along the way, he takes potshots at any researchers' works that do not support his thesis). I will confess that I skipped ahead; it wasn't worth it. By that point I just wanted him to lay it all out in point form.
I await the feminist take-down of this book. I'd be tempted to write one myself, but I can't subject myself to any more of this dreck.
I recollect reading Ashley Montagu's work as "fawning pedestalitis", but this book deserves it more. By elevating Gyna Sapiens to the position of Great Mother, he puts her in the traditional subservient place of docile nurturer.
That's it. I'm done. I can't force myself to read another chapter of paternalistic drivel from the privileged viewpoint of an old white American male physician.
While some of his physiology has merit, the conclusions he draws from it do not. Oh, did I mention that he's a devoted Freudian? And that his writing style is so florid, egotistical and repetitive that any random passage could be a contender for the Bulwer-Lytton Prize?
The author promises that if the unwary reader can survive his tortuous prose, that he will Reveal All in Chapter 13. (Along the way, he takes potshots at any researchers' works that do not support his thesis). I will confess that I skipped ahead; it wasn't worth it. By that point I just wanted him to lay it all out in point form.
I await the feminist take-down of this book. I'd be tempted to write one myself, but I can't subject myself to any more of this dreck.
I recollect reading Ashley Montagu's work as "fawning pedestalitis", but this book deserves it more. By elevating Gyna Sapiens to the position of Great Mother, he puts her in the traditional subservient place of docile nurturer.
tinkerer's review
4.0
Between 3 and 4 stars. More 4 just because it gave some of the information I needed when I needed it. The time aspect was why I picked it up. I read this in conjunction with Mermaids and Minotaurs. I recommend the combination even though on the whole you will likely find yourself infuriated.
akaneshimoyoshi's review
the beginning was really intriguing and brought up interesting points, but it quickly devolved to simplistic or unsupported arguments. i really tried to give it a chance since the topic was interesting, but i guess the back cover summary’s “awesome breadth of research” and “big brained homo sapiens” should have been a red flag. shlain is also a surgeon, so i’m not sure why he is writing a book on anthropology (with sufficient research it would have been fine, but that didn’t necessarily play out). i stopped at page 250/360 because it really got me when he brought in carl jungs concept of anima and animus and related it to gay, lesbian, same sex, and intersex theories. also the part about rape on page 220 was straight up incorrect. it started off interesting uo it was disappointing after that.
fjp11907's review
5.0
Her is a man who thinks outside of the box, big time. Women's hidden menstrual cycle was evolutionarily selected to keep track of time and power. Gotta read it to see how he gets there. This story has legs. Can't believe I haven't heard more about it. But alas the patriarchy will have none of it as he shows in his The Alphabet vs. The Goddess.
galadhir's review
4.0
Interesting story about how women's periods lead to humans learning to tell the time - and also lead to iron deficient women being dependent on men to hunt for meat for them. It pretends to be scientific but at the crux of the argument lapses into a story which depends on an intelligent creator which intended humans to have foresight and helped them to evolve that way.
As a Christian, this doesn't bother me at all. But the author doesn't appear to be aware he's slipped into theology, and blithely continues pretending to have a scientific theory.
Very interesting, but a very old story simply re-told slightly for a new generation.
As a Christian, this doesn't bother me at all. But the author doesn't appear to be aware he's slipped into theology, and blithely continues pretending to have a scientific theory.
Very interesting, but a very old story simply re-told slightly for a new generation.
aimeewnt's review
4.0
An excellent, thought-provoking book of a subject that is finally being put in the forefront, albeit with some problematic threads of discourse.
This work is definitely a fresh insight, looking at evolution and the subsequent history of the world not just from a female perspective, but that of a world defined by women. I loved the chapter on hermaphrodites and the discussion of God firstly being portrayed as a woman/same-sex, either singularly or as part of a pantheon. In fact, the latter part of the book was a joy to read, especially due to the wide variety of examples that really helped to cement the points that Shlain makes. I also thought the narratives on prehistoric women having power over men until they realised that they were fathers to specific children was insightful, in particular because of the idea that men used this as a reason to control women's sexuality is something that I've always been interested in and speculated on myself.
However, despite how forward-thinking Shlain may be, I do feel that a large quantity of his speculations are still rooted in troublesome gender roles of what a man or a woman should be. For example, that violence and hunting can just be attributed to men, that a male must have discovered fire because only a man could have been so reckless, or that women wear make-up or dye their hair blonde just to impress men. It's these vast generalations that we've been trying to get away from and sure, it's a relief to read about history with women at the helm but the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction to solidify the arguments presented in the book as a robust counter-point. It does seem that Shlain has an inclining at the end that he may be problematic, such as with his assumption of his use of possible environmental determinism harking back to Freud, but for me he never really seems to get to the central point of understanding to appreciate his own baises.
I also feel that the book is wildly speculative at times. Of course, with prehistory some artistic license is forgivable due to the lack of overall evidence, but Shlain does seem to be taking liberties in several areas. This can be seen with his overgeneralised theory that men hated women because they feared them as having sex with women on their period caused castration fears, and of course, the especially troublesome chapter on anima and animus where a homosexual person with more female anima traits can only be attracted to a partner with more male animus traits and that gay men are on the opposite spectrum to schizophrenics, and Aspergers being especially rare in females (this is undoubtedly due to the societal bias on understanding male, rather than female, symptoms). Shlain's opinion really shows in the mother/father chapter where Adam thinks of all the things about hunting he can teach his son but when it comes to having a daughter, he wonders if he can have sex with her.
The book does make you think that despite all the years of evolution that have occurred that maybe, at the heart of it, we are still primates. But perhaps that is the problem - we ascribe meanings onto the past (and present) that are based on our current understanding of the world. And with it, we go around in this circular argument until the end of time.
This work is definitely a fresh insight, looking at evolution and the subsequent history of the world not just from a female perspective, but that of a world defined by women. I loved the chapter on hermaphrodites and the discussion of God firstly being portrayed as a woman/same-sex, either singularly or as part of a pantheon. In fact, the latter part of the book was a joy to read, especially due to the wide variety of examples that really helped to cement the points that Shlain makes. I also thought the narratives on prehistoric women having power over men until they realised that they were fathers to specific children was insightful, in particular because of the idea that men used this as a reason to control women's sexuality is something that I've always been interested in and speculated on myself.
However, despite how forward-thinking Shlain may be, I do feel that a large quantity of his speculations are still rooted in troublesome gender roles of what a man or a woman should be. For example, that violence and hunting can just be attributed to men, that a male must have discovered fire because only a man could have been so reckless, or that women wear make-up or dye their hair blonde just to impress men. It's these vast generalations that we've been trying to get away from and sure, it's a relief to read about history with women at the helm but the pendulum has swung so far in the other direction to solidify the arguments presented in the book as a robust counter-point. It does seem that Shlain has an inclining at the end that he may be problematic, such as with his assumption of his use of possible environmental determinism harking back to Freud, but for me he never really seems to get to the central point of understanding to appreciate his own baises.
I also feel that the book is wildly speculative at times. Of course, with prehistory some artistic license is forgivable due to the lack of overall evidence, but Shlain does seem to be taking liberties in several areas. This can be seen with his overgeneralised theory that men hated women because they feared them as having sex with women on their period caused castration fears, and of course, the especially troublesome chapter on anima and animus where a homosexual person with more female anima traits can only be attracted to a partner with more male animus traits and that gay men are on the opposite spectrum to schizophrenics, and Aspergers being especially rare in females (this is undoubtedly due to the societal bias on understanding male, rather than female, symptoms). Shlain's opinion really shows in the mother/father chapter where Adam thinks of all the things about hunting he can teach his son but when it comes to having a daughter, he wonders if he can have sex with her.
The book does make you think that despite all the years of evolution that have occurred that maybe, at the heart of it, we are still primates. But perhaps that is the problem - we ascribe meanings onto the past (and present) that are based on our current understanding of the world. And with it, we go around in this circular argument until the end of time.
violetpretty5's review against another edition
3.0
This book aimed to explore the question "what could possibly be the evolutionary advantage to women losing significant amounts of blood/iron each month". As he tends to do, Shlain was able to hypothesize an answer incorporating seemingly disparate facets (in this case, including fatherhood, existentialism, and the linear perception of time). His arguments are always interesting and at least somewhat substantiated, but this book felt like it was built on less solid ground than The Alphabet vs. the Goddess. For instance, Chapter 21 consisted almost entirely of hypothetical conversations between people 40,000 years ago discussing their ideas about genetics and lineages -- it was hard for me to fathom even 75% of these ideas becoming apparent in one generation. In short, Shlain brings up interesting ideas, but it is not always clear to me how original all of the thinking is, how realistic all of the thinking is, and where all the loose ends go.