A Brief History of the Female Body
An Evolutionary Look at How and Why the Female Form Came to Be
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Narrated by:
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Deena Emera
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By:
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Dr. Deena Emera
About this listen
From breasts and orgasms to periods, pregnancies, and menopause—A Brief History of the Female Body is a fascinating science book explaining the mysteries of the female body through an evolutionary lens.
Let's face it: The female body is an enigma. For teenagers first experiencing their periods, the monthly arrival of mood swings and cramps can be agonizing and inconvenient. With pregnancy—perhaps the most miraculous of bodily events—comes countless potential complications, including high blood pressure, diabetes, premature birth, and postpartum depression. And menopause is equally mystifying. Why do females lose their fertility over time and experience the notorious side effects—like hot flashes, weight gain, and hair loss—while males maintain their fertility forever?
Evolutionary geneticist and educator Dr. Deena Emera has spent much of her career studying the evolution of female reproduction. A Brief History of the Female Body draws on her vast expertise as a biologist, her experience as a mother of four children, and her love of teaching to look far into our evolutionary past, illuminating how and, more importantly, why the female form has transformed over millions of years and its effects on women's health.
©2023 Deena Emera (P)2023 HighBridge, a division of Recorded BooksListeners also enjoyed...
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I learned so much from this book. I am happy.
- By Jonathan Miller on 09-08-18
By: Rob DeSalle, and others
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Missing Microbes
- How the Overuse of Antibiotics Is Fueling Our Modern Plagues
- By: Martin J. Blaser
- Narrated by: Patrick Lawlor
- Length: 8 hrs and 43 mins
- Unabridged
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In Missing Microbes, Dr. Martin J. Blaser invites us into the wilds of the human microbiome, where for hundreds of thousands of years bacterial and human cells have existed in a peaceful symbiosis that is responsible for the health and equilibrium of our body. Now this invisible eden is being irrevocably damaged by some of our most revered medical advances-antibiotics-threatening the extinction of our irreplaceable microbes with terrible health consequences.
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Very enlightening and information well supported
- By James on 05-03-15
By: Martin J. Blaser
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Sicker, Fatter, Poorer
- The Urgent Threat of Hormone-Disrupting Chemicals on Our Health and Future . . . and What We Can Do About It
- By: Leonardo Trasande MD MPP
- Narrated by: Leonardo Trasande MD MPP
- Length: 6 hrs and 44 mins
- Unabridged
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Lurking in our homes, hiding in our offices, and polluting the air we breathe is something sinister. Something we’ve turned a blind eye to for far too long. Dr. Leonardo Trasande, a pediatrician, professor, and world-renowned researcher, tells the story of how our everyday surroundings are making us sicker, fatter, and poorer. Through a blend of narrative, scientific detective work, and concrete information about the connections between chemicals and disease, he reveals what we can do to protect ourselves and our families in the short-term, and how we can help bring the change we deserve.
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The Must Read Book of 2019 is here early on Audio!
- By Ryan S on 12-21-18
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10% Human
- How Your Body's Microbes Hold the Key to Health and Happiness
- By: Alanna Collen
- Narrated by: Cat Gould
- Length: 12 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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You are just 10% human. For every one of the cells that make up the vessel that you call your body, there are nine impostor cells hitching a ride. You are not just flesh and blood, muscle and bone, brain and skin, but also bacteria and fungi. Over your lifetime, you will carry the equivalent weight of five African elephants in microbes. You are not an individual but a colony. Until recently, we had thought our microbes hardly mattered, but science is revealing a different story, one in which microbes run our bodies and becoming a healthy human is impossible without them.
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Must read for anyone that wants to be healthy
- By T. Kalinowski on 06-05-21
By: Alanna Collen
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Vagina Obscura
- An Anatomical Voyage
- By: Rachel E. Gross
- Narrated by: Siho Ellsmore
- Length: 10 hrs and 50 mins
- Unabridged
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Performance
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The Latin term for the female genitalia, pudendum, means “parts for which you should be ashamed”. Until 1651, ovaries were called female testicles. The fallopian tubes are named for a man. Named, claimed, and shamed: Welcome to the story of the female body, as penned by men. Today, a new generation of (mostly) women scientists is finally redrawing the map. With modern tools and fresh perspectives, they’re looking at the organs traditionally bound up in reproduction—the uterus, ovaries, vagina—and seeing within them a new biology of change and resilience.
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poor narration
- By Jane on 08-23-22
By: Rachel E. Gross
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Life Unfolding
- How the Human Body Creates Itself
- By: Jamie A. Davies
- Narrated by: Napoleon Ryan
- Length: 9 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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Where did I come from? Why do I have two arms but just one head? How is my left leg the same size as my right one? Why are the fingerprints of identical twins not identical? How did my brain learn to learn? Why must I die? Questions like these remain biology's deepest and most ancient challenges. They force us to confront a fundamental biological problem: How can something as large and complex as a human body organize itself from the simplicity of a fertilized egg?
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Fascinating Biology ; Distracting Narration
- By Tim on 03-01-15
By: Jamie A. Davies
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The Deeper Genome
- Why There Is More to the Human Genome than Meets the Eye
- By: John Parrington
- Narrated by: John Lee
- Length: 9 hrs
- Unabridged
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Performance
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Story
Over a decade ago, as the Human Genome Project completed its mapping of the entire human genome, hopes ran high that we would rapidly be able to use our knowledge of human genes to tackle many inherited diseases, and understand what makes us unique among animals. But things didn't turn out that way.
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Great Scientific Writing/ Wrong Narrator
- By Richard on 11-24-15
By: John Parrington
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The Gene
- An Intimate History
- By: Siddhartha Mukherjee
- Narrated by: Dennis Boutsikaris
- Length: 19 hrs and 22 mins
- Unabridged
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The extraordinary Siddhartha Mukherjee has written a biography of the gene as deft, brilliant, and illuminating as his extraordinarily successful biography of cancer. Weaving science, social history, and personal narrative to tell us the story of one of the most important conceptual breakthroughs of modern times, Mukherjee animates the quest to understand human heredity and its surprising influence on our lives, personalities, identities, fates, and choices.
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It's a Wonderful Book
- By JKC on 06-02-16
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The Language of Life
- DNA and the Revolution in Personalized Medicine
- By: Francis S. Collins
- Narrated by: Greg Itzin
- Length: 10 hrs and 45 mins
- Unabridged
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A scientific and medical revolution has crept up on us, based on study after study, from hundreds of laboratories around the world. It is no longer just a theoretical shift: every one of us will be touched by it, and many of us already have been. The meaning of disease, our understanding of the human body, and crucial decisions about what we all need to know and what choices we make about our health are at stake. Welcome to the new world of personalized medicine.
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The future of medicine
- By Ronald E on 04-12-10
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The Compatibility Gene
- How Our Bodies Fight Disease, Attract Others, and Define Our Selves
- By: Daniel M. Davis
- Narrated by: Christopher Grove
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Most of the 25,000 genes we possess are the same for all of us. Compatibility genes are those that vary most from person to person and give each of us a unique molecular signature. These genes determine both the extent to which we are susceptible to a vast range of illnesses and the different ways each of us fights disease.
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If interested in medicine, got to read
- By Howard Sterling on 06-29-16
By: Daniel M. Davis
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The Story of the Human Body
- Evolution, Health, and Disease
- By: Daniel Lieberman
- Narrated by: Sean Runnette
- Length: 14 hrs and 54 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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In this landmark book of popular science, Daniel E. Lieberman - chair of the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and a leader in the field - gives us a lucid and engaging account of how the human body evolved over millions of years, even as it shows how the increasing disparity between the jumble of adaptations in our Stone Age bodies and advancements in the modern world is occasioning this paradox: greater longevity but increased chronic disease.
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Could Have Been Good, but...
- By Trebla on 04-08-18
By: Daniel Lieberman
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This Is Your Brain on Parasites
- How Tiny Creatures Manipulate Our Behavior and Shape Society
- By: Kathleen McAuliffe
- Narrated by: Nicol Zanzarella
- Length: 8 hrs and 20 mins
- Unabridged
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
A riveting investigation of the myriad ways that parasites control how other creatures - including humans - think, feel, and act. These tiny organisms can live only inside another animal, and, as McAuliffe reveals, they have many evolutionary motives for manipulating their host's behavior. Far more often than appreciated, these puppeteers orchestrate the interplay between predator and prey.
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Entertaining but questionable studies
- By mdkoci on 01-02-17
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Why do women live longer than men? Why do women have menopause? 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? And does the female brain really exist? In Eve, Cat Bohannon answers questions scientists should have been addressing for decades. With boundless curiosity and sharp wit, she covers the past 200 million years to explain the specific science behind the development of the female sex.
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Great book!
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Both a history and an examination of human thought and behavior spanning three thousand years, On Politics thrillingly traces the origins of political philosophy from the ancient Greeks to Machiavelli in Book I and from Hobbes to the present age in Book II. Whether examining Lord Acton's dictum that "absolute power corrupts absolutely" or explicating John Stuart Mill's contention that it is "better to be a human dissatisfied than a pig satisfied," Alan Ryan evokes the lives and minds of our greatest thinkers in a way that makes hearing about them a transcendent experience.
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Simply no book quite like this
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Everyone needs this book
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expected info, got propaganda.
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What listeners say about A Brief History of the Female Body
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Dwight
- 08-07-24
Exceptionally worthwhile read
The author’s skill as a teacher is plainly evident throughout. She offers intricate, detailed information in a way that is consistently accessible.
Her coverage of the subject matter is exhaustive and, at the same time, candid about the limits of present scientific knowledge. She draws on a vast store of scientific and historic knowledge, while weaving in her personal experience with remarkable balance.
This is an exceptionally fine piece of writing.
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- Justin B.
- 08-23-23
Fascinating & entertaining
In an era where information can often become noise, this book resonates like a melodious song — filled with knowledge, understanding, and above all, appreciation our evolution as humans. Even as a man, I found myself consistently interested and enlightened by Dr. Emera’s insights, a testament to her skill in making this topic universally appealing.
Emera’s prowess as a biologist is evident in the meticulous research that underscores each chapter. Yet it is her narrative prowess that keeps the reader engrossed — seamlessly weaving together the threads of evolutionary history with her personal experiences as a mother of four. As an educator, Emera has an intrinsic understanding of how to present information. There’s a cadence to her prose that holds readers, ensuring the intricacies of evolutionary biology never feel arid or overwhelming.
One closes Dr. Emera’s work not just with a better understanding of the subject but with an augmented respect for the intricate ballet of evolution that has led to the present-day female form.
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