[LMB] The Red Queen

[Lois McMaster Bujold]

So...

    My random read for the weekend was Matt Ridley's _The Red Queen: Sex 
and the Evolution of Human Nature_, bio-evolutionary stuff.  Vastly 
entertaining -- far more of a page-turner than the last novel I read -- 
but, I note, it dates from the early 90's, therefore represents thinking 
and information from biology only up through the late 80's or so.  And 
biology has been moving pretty fast the past 15 years.  The basic 
version of his theory (recounted/popularized, not invented; he's more 
journalist than working scientist), that sex in general is a strategy in 
an arms race between organisms and their pathogens and parasites, I find 
highly convincing.  He seems on shakier ground when extending it to 
modern sexual politics.  Not that he's necessarily wrong, but I thought 
his thinking very guy-centric.  The chapter about the nature of men 
seemed to be all about men, very good -- but so did the chapter about 
the nature of women, as though he could not make the conceptual leap of 
thinking himself into the bodies, brains, and dilemmas of the other sex, 
and instead inclined to default to cliches, for the most part.  A hazard 
of such a general discussion, but still.

     Any biologists or biology fans on the list read this one, and what 
did you think?  Is there something newer/faster/better to be read?

    Next up: _Sperm Wars_, by Robin Baker.

    Ta, L.