The Red Queen Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature

Matt Ridley — 2003

Referring to Lewis Carroll's Red Queen from Through the Looking-Glass, a character who has to keep running to stay in the same place, Matt Ridley demonstrates why sex is humanity's best strategy for outwitting its constantly mutating internal predators. The Red Queen answers dozens of other riddles of human nature and culture -- including why men propose marriage, the method behind our maddening notions of beauty, and the disquieting fact that a woman is more likely to conceive a child by an adulterous lover than by her husband. Brilliantly written, The Red Queen offers an extraordinary new way of interpreting the human condition and how it has evolved.

Reviews

shorouq ali@tiamat

Sep 6, 2022

great, thorough book; loved it!!

Olivera Mitić@olyschka

Nov 24, 2021

Even though Matt Ridley said in his epilogue to this book that he doesn't regret including animals in this book I found it to be a flaw that can't necessarily be overcome. This isn't a book you will enjoy unless you are a fan of biology and the behavior of animals (which I in fact am not). I went into this expecting exactly what the title promised: the evolution of human nature, yet there was more talk about birds, insects, apes and snails than there actually was about humans. While I do understand that giving a kind of background for this topic is necessary, to me it seemed like it was overdone. Only in the last third did it actually focus on the theme it was supposed to focus on, but the 200+ pages that took me to get there weren't really worth it. There were some very interesting theories here, but I found a few facts being repeated over and over again. I don't really know what to say. I'm just pretty disappointed in The Red Queen and I'll be hesitant to pick up anything regarding this subject in the future, even though I am interested in it.