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An epic cultural journey that reveals how Venetian ingenuity and
inventions-from sunglasses and forks to bonds and currency-shaped
modernity. How did a small, isolated city-with a population that
never exceeded 100,000, even in its heyday-come to transform
western civilization? Acclaimed anthropologist Meredith Small, the
author of the groundbreaking Our Babies, Ourselves examines the the
unique Venetian social structure that was key to their explosion of
creativity and invention that ranged from the material to social.
Whether it was boats or money, medicine or face cream, opera,
semicolons, tiramisu or child-labor laws, these all originated in
Venice and have shaped contemporary notions of institutions and
conventions ever since. The foundation of how we now think about
community, health care, money, consumerism, and globalization all
sprung forth from the Laguna Veneta. But Venice is far from a
historic relic or a life-sized museum. It is a living city that
still embraces its innovative roots. As climate change effects
sea-level rises, Venice is on the front lines of preserving its
legacy and cultural history to inspire a new generation of
innovators.
The battle of the sexes can be explained at its deepest level,
writes Meredith Small, as a war of different mating strategies. In
her intriguing and provocative book about females and sex, Small
concentrates on primates - the prosimians, monkeys, and apes, whose
ancestry we share - to show how females have evolved to be highly
sexual creatures. Using nonhuman female primates as a gauge, she
describes the sexual and reproductive strategies of our nearest
cousins to demonstrate that just as males are strategists in the
reproductive game, females also search for good partners, enjoy
sex, and keep their own reproductive interests in mind. Female
Choices opens with the evolution of sexual reproduction and of
males and females as distinct forms. Small then introduces primates
and gives a detailed history of the average female's life cycle.
After devoting chapters to sexuality, reproduction, and sexual
selection theory - the theory behind female mate choice - she
discusses what female primates actually do. Drawing on her own
firsthand observation of nonhuman primates, she shows that some are
highly "promiscuous, " others prefer several unfamiliar males, and
some apparently make no choices at all. The behavior of the
undiscriminating females often affects the evolution of
relationships between the sexes and can influence the social
structure of a species. In a final chapter on human behavior, Small
maintains that the human pair-bond is a tenuous compromise made by
the two sexes to bring up highly dependent infants. But, she
writes, because both sexes also have a "natural" tendency to seek
out other partners, that bond is always at risk. Small insists that
female choice is not necessarily sexualselection, but is
nonetheless important to female fitness. Sure to provoke
controversy, her book will add a new twist to an exciting field of
research while offering significant clues as to the origins of our
own sexuality.
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