Eve by Cat Bohannon is a magnificent read. If you've ever wondered what the story of evolution would look like if it were written by the women and females of the species from whom we are derived, look no farther.

The book is based on an unsurprising - yet novel - premise: evolution relied on the females of the species. Humans wouldn't really be human without the "women's work" that we (and our ancestors) have been doing since the beginning of time. Huge advancements like language evolved specifically because of the huge time investment human women put into their children.

Bohannon wrote Eve in an interesting way; she imagined each evolutionary trait that enabled us to become human, found the nearest biological relative that would have first passed on that trait, and told stories from the perspectives of the females of the species. This sounds confusing. It's not, it's just complicated. Bohannon would take one of our distant genetic relatives, like the one nicknamed Moorgy after its scientific name, and spin a yarn for it that really made it come alive. She imagined 'a day in the life of' of sorts, by taking the reader to a scene in which Moorgy struggled to survive, letting us see how she persevered and how she cared for her young.

This was, without a doubt, one of the most interesting and gratifying scientific and science-adjacent books I've read in an exceedingly long time. It is sadly quite rare that books such as these 'make it' in this genre. Many of the books that do 'make it' are dry and written from a distinctly male perspective. This isn't necessarily bad, until it directly overlooks and cancels out a female perspective, diminishing women's labor and contributions throughout history, which far too many books (and their scientist-authors) do all too well.

If you have any interest, even just a passing one, in evolution, or if you've always wanted to learn more about it, and if you are also sick of the male-dominated perspective of every STEM text, paper, or study, you owe it to yourself to check out Eve by Cat Bohannon. It's not the easiest book to read (nor is it the hardest), but it is so rewarding, especially if you consider yourself at all a feminist. (And no, this isn't the "man-hating" vision of "feminism" that men deride and fear; it is women-empowering, honoring our contributions, but doing so without inaccuracies, flowery language, grasping for straws, and woo conclusions. This is science. And it is woman centric.)

Notes:

- Most, if not all, of the scientific terms are either explained or can be understood through context (and for any others, Kindle's Word Wise feature might make the e-book version a good choice for you).

- At 66.7% completion (Kindle edition), I reached "The End" of the book; the rest of it is the author citing sources and studies with explanations, descriptions, etc. for each one.

- The author isn't some 'nobody' who just decided all of this on a whim; she applied the scientific method to the questions she was asking, each time, and did research using scientific studies, interviews, and papers as sources.

I'd like to thank NetGalley, Cat Bohannon, and The Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group for access to the ARC. This book was truly enlightening.

I read this a while ago, but this book is so good. It's genuinely remarkable. I will say that the inclusion of trans, nonbinary, and/or intersex bodies feels clumsy at time, but that's not the author's fault due to the lack of research. I loved this and will be buying a physical copy to finish reading.

This was an engaging and thought-provoking read. The title drew me in and Eve plays the part of the foundation for Bona mom's book. Reading this I was able to follow along as Bohannon developed and supported a history of how women and and being female where created. With that said, there were several palaces where if kind this text hard to read and more speculative than I would have liked.

This book has a lot of foot notes and it was hard to read in this format but I bought the hardback copy of it and it is fantastic with illustrations and I’m really looking forward to reading it in its entirety this year.
Highly recommend based off of just my initial reading, the author has a wonderfully engaging tone for non-fiction, I anticipate this being a 4-5 star read!!

In this informative, absorbing, and rigorously researched book, Cat Bohannon sets out to answer these and many other questions surrounding the evolution, development, and capabilities of the female body.

Review

In Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Evolution, one of author Cat Bohannon’s startling revelations is that more women die of heart attacks than men, even though women are not more biologically prone to heart attacks. The opposite is true: men are more likely to suffer from heart attacks than women. However, the standard symptoms of heart attacks we know from general knowledge – pain shooting up the arm, crushing weight on the chest – are, as it turns out, those of men. Women’s heart attack symptoms, such as acid reflux and dizziness, have not been studied and are thus not widely known, resulting in more women dying of heart attacks because they do not recognize or report the signs.

Eve highlights how throughout the history of science and medicine women’s bodies have been neglected and frequently ignored, while men’s bodies have been and still are the default. A vast, meticulously researched, and often entertaining work encompassing an enormous amount of information, Eve takes the reader on an epic journey through the history and evolution of humanity, focusing specifically on the development of the female sex.

The book took Bohannon ten years to research and write, and, through chapters titled “Milk”, “Womb”, “Perception”, “Legs”, “Tools”, “Brain”, “Voice”, “Menopause”, and “Love”, provides a wealth of data from relevant scientific fields. The author goes into in-depth analyses of biological and evolutionary features, physical and mental variables, and societal pressures and influences, while countering common misperceptions, assumptions, and stereotypes.

Women do not have just one common ancestor, or just one “Eve” as Bohannon calls them, but many Eves. Over the course of 200 million years, different mammals and primates played crucial roles in human evolution, and Eve charts how the females of those species played their parts in the evolution of the female human body. The impetus behind Bohannon’s undertaking is that ignoring and neglecting the female half of humanity in medical and evolutionary studies has had a deleterious effect on women’s healthcare, and on knowledge and understanding of the female body as a whole.

The book makes clear from the outset that the notion of women’s bodies being just like men’s, except for a few external parts missing, is not the truth. Sex is not simply a matter of external sex organs, Eve affirms: our sex characteristics permeate every part of our mammalian bodies and the lives we live inside them. Referring sensitively and with nuance to the varying issues of trans men and women and people with DSDs, the book makes clear that there is, in its own words, a massive difference between biological sex and gender identity; that most of the scientific community agrees that sex and gender are two fundamentally different things; and that much more research is needed in all areas of sex and gender affecting people who have been unjustly neglected, stigmatized, and marginalized.

Amongst the comprehensively researched facts and brilliantly explanatory examples, Eve occasionally adopts a colloquial style which readers will find amusing, but perhaps a little jarring at times. For instance, in the “Menopause” chapter, when describing in graphic and harrowing detail a hypothetical breech birth in Jericho 8,500 years ago, and the excruciating, life-threatening agony of the young woman giving birth, the child emerging turns out to be a boy, after which the author/narrator wryly comments, “Figures.”

Bohannon’s wit and humour prove nonetheless effective, creating an enjoyable and enlightening read as opposed to a dry academic treatise. She demonstrates eloquent storytelling skills when evoking different eras and conditions in which our ancestral Eves lived. Her epiphany while watching Ridley Scott’s 2012 science fiction film Prometheus, in which Noomi Rapace’s character, impregnated by an alien, staggers to a medical pod for an emergency C-section, only to be told that the pod is only calibrated for male bodies, will resonate with women everywhere. “Who does that?” asked an annoyed woman behind her in the cinema. Bohannon’s answer: science and the medical profession, which do exactly that.

This timely, thought-provoking book makes no apology for its focus on the female sex and on how female biology is unique unto itself, with crucial differences and distinctions from male biology. It makes a clear argument as to why these must be recognized and researched: not only for female healthcare and medicine to be improved upon, but also for sexist and misogynist attitudes to women and girls, and outdated stigma and squeamishness about female bodies in general, to disappear. One positive aspect is what Bohannon terms a quiet revolution in the science of womanhood: a new push to study, discover, and understand what it means for women to have evolved the way we have, with all the physical characteristics resulting from that evolution. We are our bodies, Bohannon says, and knowledge and understanding of the female body could radically change the way all human beings think about our species.

This was definitely an interesting book with a lot of great information. I learned about ancestors I had never heard of before and traits special to women that I never knew. The writing was also pretty good. My only issue is there were some parts that dragged a bit for me.

Absolutely fascinating and engaging nonfiction. Eve dives in to the evolutionary path that led to what women are today. Well researched and never boring, Eve is a great read for anyone who likes to take a deep, deep dive. I will definitely be recommending this book to other readers.

5 fascinating stars, both entertaining and educational
“We needed 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 our bodies evolved how they work, what it really means to be a woman.” Eve, by Cat Bohannon succeeds at this gigantic task in remarkable ways. This fun and fascinating book “traces the evolution of women’s bodies, from tits to toes, and how that evolution shapes our lives today.”

The author takes a complex subject, female evolution over eons, and makes every concept understandable. Cat Bohannon balances the personal with the universal in telling the story of how the female body drove 200 million years of human evolution. The book is extremely well-researched and organized. Author’s notes and an impressive and extensive bibliography are included.

Bohannon’s sense of humor lightens what could be dreary subjects, but never are. “Human breast milk, as I’ve since come to learn is also remarkably adaptive. All mammalian milk is. Making babies the way we do is a messy, dangerous business. It sucks, in fact.”

I particularly liked the chapter on the Brain. ”Given hominins’ deep history of being prey species, such a nice big brain was probably extra incentive for our predators. Dessert, if you like…Eves’ brains became more and more disproportionally large compared with the rest of their bodies. They finally got so big, in fact, that they had to build stronger clavicles to support neck muscles that could hold the silly thing up – which did a number on human childbirth, not to mention the fact that now our newborns can’t hold up their own heads for months.”

As stated in my star rating, Eve is both educational and entertaining. It could be thoroughly discussed in college classes or simply enjoyed because of the fascinating subject and outstanding writing. Highly recommended!

This is one of the most compelling non-fiction reads I've ever read. I think Cat Bohannon's awards for this are well deserved. This title took me a while to get through, as it was very thought provoking but stunningly written. Bohannon's depth of knowledge is evident, and her talent as a writer is equally as brilliant. Eve is an incredibly look into human evolution and development and I will be re-reading this again and again for years to come, and I'm sure I'll be learning something new each time.

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for this ARC!

This book is chocked full of information that is both shocking and informative. A graduate level class could be taught using this book as a textbook, and it has so much information that I had to read very slowly to soak it all in. I am not sure that Eve is for the masses (or for anyone looking for a simple non-fiction book), but it is a fascinating, research-based, intellectual read that will have me thinking for a long time. An index would be a great addition so it could be referenced often.

Fascinating book. Delves into the female being and covers everything from beginning to end. Written with tons of research and references but not “boring” by any means. Highly recommend picking up a copy of this.

This is a long and involved book, and I took my time with it. It is a very detailed and interesting look at the evolution of the female body. I appreciate how the author used a combination of biology, archeology, genetics, sociology, and historical records to deep dive into what makes a female body different from a male body. I learned so much, especially about our brains, our skeletal makeup, and menopause. I believe a physical copy would be helpful as it would be easier to go back and revisit previously read portions.. Thank you to the author, publisher, and NetGalley for the eARC to read and review. All opinions are my own.

A scientific approach to understanding our body. I found the explanations simple, although sometimes they use technical language (it is necessary). I appreciated that Bohannon clarified what is considered scientific evidence and the different interpretations that are made of it. He also adds comments on his own conclusions, which contributes to reflecting on dogmatic thoughts that have no scientific basis.

I learned a lot about new studies on how the body works, therapies in the clinical research stage, and also about misogyny in the scientific and medical area. I recommend reading this book if you are interested in investigating the origin of some of our customs and the way our bodies have changed for thousands of years.

Received an advance copy from NetGalley

I am a sucker for narrative biology books. As a book billed as "Sapiens but with the female body" I was very intrigued. Overall I came out liking the book and the topics the author chose were both interesting and non-traditional way of framing human biological and cultural evolution.

Chapters dedicated to milk, how our wombs developed, what early tools were used for, etc the author really hammers home how odd it is for a species that really sucks at giving birth to become so prevalent and dominant. And subsequently details and references research that points to ways female bodies and female society has evolved to make that possible.

This book does a great job of diving into the existing research and also calling out when there is a lack of. And unfortunately because this is a book about the history of female bodies, often times the conclusion was "here's a hypothesis but no one bothered to collect enough data about it"

It was an interesting read and would recommend for anyone looking for a different, and much needed, perspective.

Negatives: The writing style was hard to get through at times, it ranges from fun anecdotes to scientific writing to op ed. The last chapter really meanders and skims over the problem of sexism (big topic to attempt to cover in one chapter).

This book presented a lot of interesting information, but tended to ramble, and at times it was easy to loose the thread of the point of the discussion or what she was trying to prove.

This was what Sapiens should have been. I always feel big gaps in non-fiction science books and this book finally starts to fill in some of the missing information.
The book is written in a casual style - the reader won’t be bogged down in heavy biology and anthropology lingo. While I giggled at all the penis styles and descriptions, it might deter me from recommending it to a couple more prudish readers.
There are a lot of descriptions of vaginal birth - rips, tears, dislocations. But I do think this should be required reading for every person that’s been born.
The author does address trans gender and non-heterosexual relationships. The final chapter goes a bit of the rails. While she made necessary points about education and women’s issues throughout the world, it didn’t seem to have the same rigorous citations and editing as the rest of the book.

I am absolutely loving this so far I can’t believe this is her debut novel?! I predict this will be a book I think everyone should read. I will post final Goodreads review soon!

I was very excited to receive a copy of this one! This book conceptually is really interesting and I like seeing this topic explored so thoroughly in one book. I thought the way in which the chapters were organized made a lot of sense and helped me as a reader build the knowledge I was learning.

Since this book is based in science, the language used was sometimes a teensy bit overwhelming, but this is coming from a girl that barely scraped by in any science class. What I thought was done really well was how the science and technical writing was balanced by a more conversational commentary from the author. She did a good job of weaving in how the info she is giving us is culturally significant, or at least reminding us why it’s so interesting.

Overall it was a really enjoyable read for me! I’ve already recommended it for some holiday gifts this year because I know plenty of others that will also get enjoyment from it.

I may be a science nerd but oftentimes I find science books incredibly dull, boring, and dry. Not this book!! Such an interesting, fascinating read with lots of humor interspersed throughout. I definitely am looking forward to future books written by the author.

Everything you never knew you wanted to know about women is in this book. Cat Bohannon frames the particulars of women evolutionarily, from the dawn of live births to the changing uterus to sexism. This book will leave you with plenty of did-you-know facts that you'll want to share with everyone, and it'll expand your knowledge of understanding of women and how we became what we are.