"Eve: How The Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution" by author and researcher Cat Bohannon is a captivating and immensely powerful, groundbreaking debut. A very personable tone, and natural storytelling ability makes this nonfiction science book eminently approachable and easily accessible.

Divided into sections that explore the turning points of female evolution—Milk, Womb, Perception, Eggs, Tools, Voice, Brain, Menopause, and Love—this well and thoroughly researched, fascinating work puts forth the idea that what enabled humans to make the successful move in taking over the planet were advances in specifically female evolution—particularly gynaecology.

Bohannon makes a compelling argument, taking the perfect, almost conspiratorial, ever wise, best friend tone. I highly value continuous learning, broadening my horizons and being shown a new and enlightening perspective and this book checked all of these boxes with great interest and pleasure.

I'm so excited to add a hardcopy version of this gem to my library so I can eagerly and enthusiastically reread, reference, and annotate to my heart's content.

A huge thank you to NetGalley and Publishers for a gifted copy of the digital ARC in exchange for an honest review. All opinions are my own.

In an often recounted story, a journalist recalled being in an Anthropology class when her female professor held up a picture of an antler with 28 tally marks carved upon it, saying: "This is alleged to be man's first attempt at a calendar." We all looked at the bone in admiration. "Tell me," she continued, "what man needs to know when 28 days have passed? I suspect that this is woman's first attempt at a calendar." In Eve: How the Female Body Drove Human Evolution, author Cat Bohannon (with a Ph.D. from Columbia University in the evolution of narrative and cognition) expands on this idea of considering the needs of the female of our species when looking for the catalysts behind the great shifts in our development — from bipedal locomotion to language and tool use — and in a narrative that starts with the first tiny mammal that coexisted with the dinosaurs and traces that story up to today’s reality, Bohannon has assembled a fascinating, comprehensive, and entertaining study of what is usually left out of the story of “us” — all while making a forceful case for why focussing on the history of the female body matters for the future of all of humanity. In a quirky bit of formatting, Bohannon starts each chapter with a glimpse at the “Eve” of a new development — the Eve of lactation is a Morganucodon sweating beads of milk through her fur in an underground den during the Jurassic Period; the Eve of menopause is a grandmother using her experience to serve as an emergency midwife in early Jericho — and I found the format charming. I loved everything about this (even if it did take quite a while to read) and I would unhesitatingly recommend it to any reader.