Descripciones mejoradas de Syndetics:

Explores the thermodynamic background of sex, the evolution of sexual reproduction, the quest for mates, and sex-suppressed societies in plants, animals, and humans.

Tabla de contenidos provista por Syndetics

• 1 A Universe in Heat: Sexual Energy(p. 14)
• 2 Hot and Bothered: Sexual Beginnings(p. 48)
• 3 Cannibals and Other Virgins: Fusion Sex(p. 84)
• 4 The Kiss of Death: Sexuality and Mortality(p. 124)
• 5 Strange Attractions: Sex and Perception(p. 148)
• 6 Come Together: the Future of Sex(p. 200)
• Endnotes(p. 229)
• Appendix(p. 239)
• Glossary(p. 244)
• Index(p. 251)

Reseñas proporcionadas por Syndetics

Library Journal Review

The title is sure to titillate, but leading biologist Margulis and her award-winning collaborator son are all business in this billion-year survey of sex. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

With its eye-catching title and acclaimed mother-and-son team of science writers (What Is Life?), this look at something that everyone talks about but few understand promises much‘but delivers somewhat less. Discussion of the behavioral aspects of sex among the higher animals is limited in favor of a biologist's-eye treatment (Margulis is a professor of biology at the University of Massachusetts) of sex as an exchange of energy and genetic information. We thus learn much about the diversity of damselfly penises, about female whiptale lizards that can reproduce uniparentally and about Myxomycotes, which "endure the removal of large sections of their plasmodia," but little about the way sex plays out in our cultures or in the behaviors of other large mammals. Homosexuality, while considered, is largely side-stepped, aside from a few extreme anecdotal cases like that of Emma, a woman with a penis-sized clitoris and a vagina. The connection between sex and death is reconfigured, meanwhile, as a connection between reproduction and cell death. The 80 full-color photos (some seen by PW), both page sized and bite sized, do much to enhance the allure of the book, however, as do the authors' sometimes poetic sensibilities ("The Universe is a swelter of starlight, swamped in excess, consumed by time," reads the book's opening). Ultimately, though, Margulis and Sagan never satisfactorily answer the titular question, and in fact raise more questions than their focus on our microbial origins answers. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

CHOICE Review

To answer the question of the book's title, sex is what sells books, even books with no redeeming social value, or so these authors and their publisher believe. Sex as a sales tool can overcome sophomoric wordplay such as "the universe, one might say, is 'in heat'...." Sex can overcome blatant misrepresentation of modern evolutionary biology--"organisms do display purpose" and scientific fact--"to physicians sex is the cause of AIDS." A playful attitude toward sex justifies the use of color plates (driving up the cost of the book) even where their relevance to the text is doubtful at best ("Plate 39: Jungle fever: a praying mantis mounting a chipmunk") or at worst simply sexually motivated ("Plate 46: Erect penis bonobo" or "Plate 53: Estrus. Stretching female bonobo with prominent vulva"). One plate showing human genitalia has absolutely no connection to the paragraph in which it is cited! The explanation for all of this? Sex sells. Students and library patrons are more than the sex-crazed "genitalia-sniffing mammals" the authors anticipate. A poor attempt to sell biology with sex. Not for academic libraries. G. Stevens University of New Mexico

Booklist Review

Looking at sex microscopically, the authors define it as "gene transfer," which sometimes leads to the formation of a new being out of genetic material from preexisting beings. The seasoned Margulis/Sagan duo (What Is Life? 1995) begins with a discussion of primordial evolution in the bacterial world, explaining how bacteria survive in response to a chemical and thermodynamic environment. As they established the evolutionary paths that life still treads, bacteria and single-celled organisms occupy the larger part of the presentation. The authors take readers up that evolutionary ladder, from bacteria to cells and the distinction between meiosis and mitosis, arriving at the emergence of fusion sex, the joining of sperm and egg. They then proceed to the sexual behavior of macroscopic organisms, pulling examples from ferns, fowl, and all manner of beings, humans included, to show the interconnectedness of sexual reproduction with its ancient origins. This album-style book, with dozens of color plates, is a dependable resource of the underlying biology of sex. --Gilbert Taylor

Notas de autor provistas por Syndetics

Lynn Margulis was born in Chicago, Illinois on March 5, 1938. She graduated from the University of Chicago at the age of 18. She received a master's degree in genetics and zoology from the University of Wisconsin and a Ph.D. in genetics from the University of California, Berkeley. She taught for 22 years at Boston University before joining the faculty at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1988.

She was best known for her theory of species evolution by symbiogensis. The manuscript in which she first presented her findings was published in 1967 by the Journal of Theoretical Biology. An expanded version, with additional evidence to support the theory, became her first book entitled Origin of Eukaryotic Cells. Her other works include Symbiosis in Cell Evolution, Luminous Fish: Tales of Science and Love, Dazzle Gradually: Reflections on the Nature of Nature, and Mind, Life, and Universe: Conversations with Great Scientists of Our Time. She died five days after suffering a hemorrhagic stroke on November 22, 2011 at the age of 73.

(Bowker Author Biography)