Woman: An Intimate Geography Paperback – August 5, 2014

Majority of the knowledge you have about human body anatomy is probably from high school or college textbooks, and you will find most of those are focused mainly on male body anatomy. Natalie Angier explores different parts of female body with scientifically supported arguments, her own experiences, and stories of others with very beautiful manner of writing and some humors.In our society, men tend to be overvalued even in the evolutionary theory of human anatomy. If females exist just for the reproduction, then they are useless once they pass a childbearing age. My favorite part of the book is when she challenges this aspect of the evolutionary theory with her ideas of the "grandmother hypothesis". According to her, back in ancient time when humans are out hunting and gathering food for our survival, men were the prior and women were the ones gathered food. Even when men successfully brought back good amount of food for their tribe, they did not get extra share for their own family members; and when that happened, females, as the gatherers, were the ones had capabilities to affect whether her children get enough food or not. However, when mothers needed help, there were grandmothers who were past childbearing age, still played very important role in bringing up the children. Basically what Angie was saying is that the stronger women were after menopause, the more likely her children (grandchildren) were to survive. So women are expected to live active lives even after menopause. This is from one of my favorite chapter "Mothers, Grandmothers, and Other Dames." It totally challenges the evolutionary theory of how females after menopause are useless. Unlike many other species such as chimpanzees and monkeys, human females have incredibly huge role as grandmothers. This is just one of the absolutely amazing chapters in a book, so if you are interested in explore more about women, this is definitely a must read book!I would recommend everybody to read this book if you are interested in elevating your knowledge of women or have interest in feminism. But it is a must read for men as well, you will discover tons of information you had never known before. Even for women, do not just assume that being a female will just put you at the top of knowledge about yourself. This book definitely provides you absolute beauty of women's body and you enjoy and love it even if you are not fond of biology or science.

the book is filled to the brim with exciting descriptions of biology/humanity/women/etc. angier writes with a concise and poetic style, begging you to continue readingshe does a phenomenal job dispelling various caricatures and stereotypes of femininity, drawing on a wide range of cultural and biological sources. i can't vouch for the reliability of angier's translations of scientific studies, but i greatly enjoyed them and she was comprehensive enough i suspect her main points hold up even if a few of the (many!) studies are not current/represented-accurately/etcas a fellow child of christian scientists (and unfortunately, like natalie, having a needlessly and prematurely dead father), i greatly appreciate her fresh-eyed look at the fields of medicine and biology.. a rare and exciting perspective, imootherwise/overall i found the work most compelling for its insight into humanity and biology at large, and while its woman-centricity makes a good catalyst for this discussion, i found it regressive at timeson page 374, angier quotes patricia gowaty ->"all of these strategies and counterstrategies are going on in real time, so that we have responses associated with learning and experience rather than as a result of coded genetic modules.. the ecological problems that one sex has to solve are produced by the other sex. nothing is fixed. until we incorporate that notion, of the dynamic and dialectic pressures underlying human mating systems, we'll never get to the real meat of human behavior, and we'll continue repeating the extreme, and extremely boring, parodies"wow!! but rather than employ this dialectic perspective, angier simply states it (at the end). she does an astounding job of connecting a huge number of exciting topics - nominally a discussion of womanhood, and effectively one of humanity - but she digs her heels in for the sexual tug-o-war, most noticeably by floating casual/negative/frequent male stereotypes. a particular zinger (p251) reads ->"men do not live as long as women do, after all, and the disparity in lifespan applies globally. maybe they don't have to live as long. or maybe they don't want to. maybe they get tired of losing their hair, and of the political pomp of the hunt, and of making bad jokes about their mothers-in-law"try substituting "men" and "women" along with your most despised of the tired-female-stereotypes, and it's a career finisher (in some circles)gowaty's transcendent approach would make a significantly more powerful/shattering/foundational work (imo). but, it's still a great (5 star!) read - and i highly recommend it to anyone who's intrigued

Angier writes in a way that speaks to women of all ages, experiences, and classes. The information flowing from the pages of this book blew my mind; and I had always considered myself fairly well-informed about my body, and how it worked. Turns out, I didn't know squat. She poses facts, theories and ideas in a way that is provocative, yet easy to digest. At times she can get a little wordy, perhaps a bit "out-there," with her suggestions and explanations. But I find it humorous, even endearing, as I can definitely see where she is coming from. She wouldn't have been able to hide her femenist agenda even if she wanted to, and while other authors might have allowed this to serve as a detriment to their work, Angier's only enhances the message(s) she is trying to convey.I think it's a fabulous book that every single woman should read. I think it should in fact be required reading in school, right up there with "Our Bodies, Ourselves." Raging against the male-dominated field of science with political motives is one thing. But at the very least, modern society has shown us that our young women, generation after generation, are in desperate need of better educations about how their bodies work. I think this book is a good first step.