Bitch

Cooke brings an extremely entertaining style to this wide-ranging tour of female biology and reproduction. Rather than drill down on a single species, Cooke brings in experts of species from across the animal kingdom on different aspects of sex, starting from its biological complexity and going through mating and child rearing behaviors and strategies. What emerges is the plethora of strategies that different species take, which can even differ radically between those that are closely related, and the degree to which recent human cultural biases have driven the study and interpretation of these behaviors. The book is a bit light on scientific rigor, with Cooke using interviews with scientists rather than digging into the papers themselves. This is a somewhat minor complaint - I think most people won't mind skipping the details. Highly recommend

This book is probably a really good one to hand to anyone who likes clever prose and is interested in learning about actual animals (and not, as exists in the most commonly referenced texts on evolution, fucking hypothetical seaweed). There are tons of examples that discuss the concepts within the book, which really help to give a mental image to what's happening. This is something that I appreciate, even in pop science texts.

I also think it's good for any of the people others know who are interested in the topic but are sitting on the fence about gender and sexuality (like someone who still thinks men/women and their related roles are the only ones in the world but is at least open to learning some new facts about their world that could, one hopes, shift their gears a bit).