NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
Available Oct. 3, 2023 in the United States and Canada, Oct. 12 in the UK, and Oct. 19 in the Netherlands.
(24 other languages presently being translated for publication in 2024 and 2025)
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.
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.
PEOPLE SAY NICE THINGS:
“You talk about science, but it sounds like beat poetry.”
—Sarah Silverman, The Daily Show
“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
“Talking to Cat Bohannon is like being struck with a tornado of ideas.”
—Lucy Cooke, bestselling author of Bitch and zoologist
“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
“A vast and revolutionary history of female evolution…It is a gripping, lyrical tale of female suffering, of remarkable resilience, of the lengths we will go to to survive and to protect our young. It makes being a woman seem truly extraordinary.”
—Laura Hackett, The Sunday Times
“Rarely have I been caught so off-guard by a book because right from the beginning, it’s clear that (Cat has) deep knowledge about an enormous range of scientific subjects. And this isn’t just a repackaging of the standard popular-science stories. On subject after subject that I thought I knew something about, (Cat) brought forth facts and ideas that were totally new to me, that were fascinating, and it changed my view of the world.”
—Steven Levitt, Freakonomics Radio
“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
“Such a rare book: scholarly, funny, accessible and very important. A truly original history of humans that explains so much of who we are today.”
—Chris van Tulleken, author of Ultra-Processed People
“Utterly fascinating. This book should revolutionise our understanding of human life. It is set to become a classic.”
—George Monbiot, author of Regenesis
“I’m obsessed with EVE... Riveting, jaw-dropping, hilarious, exciting, enraging and deeply, deeply refreshing. Bohannon presents cutting-edge science with glittering sensory detail, awe-inspiring story-telling, and a genius and often poetic turn of phrase. I will never forget her description of animals as "essentially lumpy donuts filled with ocean." I loved the real talk about giving birth to live babies and the reality of gestation and motherhood. So clever, so necessary, so funny. Finally, Eve's story is here and Bohannon's remarkable and gripping telling will change the world.”
—Lucy Jones, author of Matrescence