Woman Book

This book needs illustrations! You can't scrutinize and analyze and critique the geography of the vagina (chapter 4) without providing visual aids to those of us who don't possess one or haven't sighted one in... well... a long time. You might as well be talking about the album cover of Sgt. Pepper - yes I vaguely remember the layout, no I don't recall exactly where Ringo was standing.

That said, Angier doesn't just explain female physiology, she celebrates it. Loudly. Intelligently. Frankly. This is no college textbook, but maybe it should be. Women 101, freshman syllabus, M-W-F, 9am - noon.

And it's not just physiology, it's also biology, psychology, anthropology, sociology, chemistry, and primatology. (I laughed rather loudly at the labeling of the rhesus monkey's capacity for social compromise as "rhesus peaces"). Science geek nirvana.

Speaking as a man, I was humbled and sometimes horrified. For all the splendor and beauty of the female body, there is a lot there that can go wrong. Even when it goes right it's still messy and complicated. A nice place to visit, but I would not want to live there.