Making Sense of Sex: How Genes and Gender Influence Our Relationships

In Making Sense of Sex, the husband and wife team of David Barash, an evolutionary biologist, and Judith Lipton, a clinical psychiatrist, draw on their respective areas of expertise to explore and explain the central fact of our existence-that men and women are fundamentally, unalterably different. They present an eye-opening and wide-ranging consideration of what those differences are, how they came to be, why they are important, and what they mean in our everyday lives.

The authors integrate biological and anthropological findings with real-life stories of indviduals to address the conundrums that surround male-female behavior and relationships. Drawing on the latest research in evolutionary biology, they trace the multifaceted gender gap to the basic, defining difference between males and females: that one makes sperm, the other, eggs. They show how that distinction explains why women and men differ in essential ways, exploring such questions as: Why are men more attracted than women to pornography, group sex, and one-night stands? Why are women the "gatekeepers" of sex? Why do women have orgasms?

Making Sense of Sex is a highly informative and entertaining look at human relationships. The book will help readers not only to better understand themselves, but to better understand their children, their relatives, and their lovers with whom they share so much yet find so infuriatingly and fascinatingly different.

David P. Barash is professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Washington. He received his Ph.D. in zoology from the University of Wisconsin, and is the author of several books.

Judith Eve Lipton received her M.D. from the University of North Carolina, trained in psychiatry at Stanford University, and now practices psychiatry in Seattle, Washington.