And What It Means for Modern Relationships - Why We Stray

I'm not sure all transformations are good but this one has been remarkable. After reading Sex at Dawn I can honestly say that my world view, my life has changed. That doesn't happen often and I thank Chris and Cacilda for this ground breaking read.

This book will flip every assumption you've ever made about human sexuality and monogamy on its head. It's smart, funny and eye-opening, and I believe it will be looked back on many years from now as one of the most important books of our time.

Get it. Read it. Pass it on.

It is incredible that this is a book when everything that is written on its pages can be deduced using reasoning and observing around. it was too much in the same subjects and in all its pages It did not express anything that I did not know

This is an amazingly entertaining (and funny) book that helps shed light on the sexual urges we feel and why we feel them. This book will help you analyze your own sexuality and I expect that it will encourage and improve healthy communication in couples that read it.

Drones on like a textbook. I thought out would be more on human tendencies toward polygamy and heterosexuality... It wasn't! Also it went way to far back.more like a history book for a really interesting course than a good book.

They write like Slate: great titles, great opening sentences, but shoddy research, no follow through, no sense that they really read or understood what they were reading.

Provocative but ultimately badly written - the authors don't even try to write well.

Coontz's History of Marriage is far, far superior - that is well researched and responsible.

The book is a many layered gift. It's a honest look into human relations, a deep research into what we know about human nature, a critical review of existing hypotheses, an opportunity to remember that popularizing scientific articles need to be read with a very critical mind.
The authors are standing on the side of biology - there is wisdom in the way we are made and the base needs serious consideration.

This was a fascinating, interdisciplinary book that presents evidence from a variety of fields that convincingly demonstrates the weaknesses of the dominant nuclear family/monogamy-is-natural paradigm our culture has been laboring under for several thousand years. Excellent topic of conversation with all your open-minded friends and hopefully your partner/s.

I loved this book. The facts are presented in a fun dialouge and related with charming anecdotes. Whether you personally agree or disagree with promiscuity, you cant ignore the facts or our evolution. I whole heartedly recommend this book to all openminded thinkers.

..through strange landscapes, 'Sex at Dawn' had an almost revolutionary effect on my thinking and feeling about sex, love and relationships! I usually don't care much for evolutionary theory, but much of this makes good sense. Even if I suspect the theories presented here will be used as fuel on male chauvinists' fires, the authors themselves are free- and open-minded, and give the reader lots of new information to use for making up your own opinions about the good old question: are humans monogamous by nature or not?

I like this book it has some good concepts, reasoning and valid arguments that brings humality to our humanity regarding sex. It is written with bias contrary to the concept of monogamy that could be improved by being impartial. However I enjoyed reading it.

Well researched and well written. Provides the basis for understanding why monogamy is such a challenge. Still... For solutions we each have to find our own path, but with the knowledge and understanding from this book, one should be better able to find what works for one self and one's relationships.

Chris Ryan and his partner Cacilda Jethá have put me in an interesting position by challenging my ingrained thought processes about what human relationships should be like. Definitely an interesting read... and I'm only a quarter of the way through!

"Sex At Dawn," whether you agree with it's conclusions or not, at least leads you to their reasoning through a scientific process of discovery. Without getting preachy, the authors make a very plausible case that humans are, in fact, not monogamous creatures naturally. This is not a book to incite emotional, political responses (though obviously it has, and will continue to), but instead to initiate discussion on some very difficult self-discoveries that we, as a society, must face.

"Sex At Dawn" has made me realize the difficulties of the life that we have chosen for one-another in the modern world, and how much work it will take to stay on the "high road."

What an excellent summary of why we are so unhappy as a society with monogamy and why so many stray. The burden of our religious and cultural past has created so much unhappiness, and this book does an excellent job of telling you why. And I like the wit too :-)

A very interesting new (at least to me) theory of how humans evolved and our relationship to our primate forerunners. The chart comparing anatomical differences among the primates is worth the price of the book alone - a wonderful graphic summary of six different and important factors. I would say the book is almost certain to be controversial as it challenges several fairly basic assumptions about how and why we behave like we do.

This book is a different look at Human Sexual Behavior and I, for one, believe it. The book is written in a humorous style that puts forth its serious ideas in an amusing and easy reading way. I am a middle aged white woman and my college student, possible Anthropology major, daughter is also reading it. Our sexual discussions have really gotten interesting. It's my new way of looking at life.

This book is just mind -blowing head opener. Its amazing how authors manage to touch so many different life areas( evolutiin, psychology, humour, history, medicine) and combine them into one masterpiece.

This book is full of interesting tidbits and factoids; but unfortunately, the majority seem to be mistaken, confused, out of context, or just plain wrong. As a result, the conclusions are unhelpful, as no longer backed up by research. Read "Sex at Dusk", which dismantles the problems pretty decisively, instead.

I saw Christopher Ryan talk at TED which was fascinating is why I bought this book. But I now feel that what seemed like a very intelligent and thoughtful new approach to sexuality turns out to be rather poorly written and decidedly pedestrian. While I did learn some new things, I'm no longer fully convinced that the ideas in this book are supported by the evidence. I suspect that these ideas will contribute to renewed interest in research to figure out some of the disturbing contradictions we humans live with.

"Forget what you think you know about the origin of species. "Sex at Dawn" sets out to prove that our prehistoric ancestors were happy and healthy, thanks in no small part to lots of egalitarian, polyamorous, noisy group sex." - Kate Dailey

Excellent book giving perspective and understanding from an educational viewpoint! It challenges the mainstream ideas and therefore challenges the ideas we are brought up to believe as standard and natural.

So you think Monogamy is the ‘norm?’ Try again. This book does not deplete the importance of Monogamy or the reality that it is the lifestyle we most commonly live in the US, it only challenges the notion that Monogamy is ‘normal’ worldwide and that we are biologically made to be monogamous. If this were true, why the divorce rate?!

Very few real scientific connections made. Darwin was never concerned with the "mating game" as such. It's not good enough to draw inferences from "hunter gatherers": There's no information to be drawn from such generalisations. No one knows what these first bipeds did. The author did not do his homework, either at the pre-historic or modern levels.

This book was disappointing. I was hoping for an objective book on human sexuality and non-monogamy. The book does include references to a lot of potentially interesting research on primate sexuality, but it is filled with logical fallacies, unverified and unverifiable claims, quotations taken out of context, dramatic conclusions from scant evidence, petulant sniping at other authors, and so on. In short, it is unprofessional and simply not good science writing.

My dozens of notes on the text range from a scattering of "interesting" and "revealing" and such, to "correlation does not imply causation", "anecdotalism", "weaselish", "Where is the citation?", "loaded", "confirmation bias", "hyperbolic", etc., to "...", "ORLY", "This is bulls*** and has no place in this text", and "What the actual f***". I was especially frustrated by the authors' sensationalism, their tendency to repeat claims with little to no evidence, and their excessive sweeping generalizations. (Also, they seem to want to retcon Darwin for some reason.)

If you read this, read it critically. It's also worth reading Sex at Dusk: Lifting the Shiny Wrapping from Sex at Dawn, although that text has its own flaws as well.

I follow Dan Savage's column, and he's been promoting this book for a while. I'm only 1/3 way through it, but I understand why. It's well-written, easy to follow, funny, specific point yet no agenda. It's changing me.

This is a fantastic book. I thoroughly enjoyed it. Its incredibly well researched and documented, and clearly(almost poetically)written. An easy read that really makes you really think about culturally accepted views on sexuality critically. I highly recommend it for anyone interested in confronting popular beliefs.

When I ordered the two books 1) Sex at dawn, Origins of human sexual behavior, and Sex at dawn How we mate etc.I assumed that they were two different volumes covering separate subjects. I found to my surprise that they cover the same subject. However that does not take away my enjoyment and interest in the subject which I recommend to anyone with an interest in this subject.

This was a fascinating read,well written with a really fun sense of humor. I like to try to figure out what makes people tick, and I feel this broadened my understanding of why people are the way they are. The authors did a convincing job of showing how monogamy is a relatively new invention in human interactions, not a biological imperative as we've been repeatedly told.

I was super excited to read this book. It turned out to be really scientific and informative but I was very disappointed with how much of the book talked about monkies. I wanted more on modern day sexuality, relationships and cultures. But everything seemed to relate back to monkies. I understand the book is called Sex at Dawn but the tag line should've been revamped to not lead me to believe it would be more about human behavior of the present day. Disappointed.

What a refreshing and politically incorrect book. Read this if you want to know why your marriage is failing even though you "love" your spouse. The authors say the deck is stacked squarely against you and the solutions that might make it work, don't. If you're contemplating marriage or some long-term-committed-monogamy of another sort, read this book. This way you'll have the other point of view and won't feel bushwacked 10 years down the road. I'm not certain everything in here is 100% fact, although it is all based on fact. Some parts don't feel quite right, but much of it resonated strongly and clearly for me.

This was a fascinating read,well written with a really fun sense of humor. I like to try to figure out what makes people tick, and I feel this broadened my understanding of why people are the way they are. The authors did a convincing job of showing how monogamy is a relatively new invention in human interactions, not a biological imperative as we've been repeatedly told.

I was super excited to read this book. It turned out to be really scientific and informative but I was very disappointed with how much of the book talked about monkies. I wanted more on modern day sexuality, relationships and cultures. But everything seemed to relate back to monkies. I understand the book is called Sex at Dawn but the tag line should've been revamped to not lead me to believe it would be more about human behavior of the present day. Disappointed.

What a refreshing and politically incorrect book. Read this if you want to know why your marriage is failing even though you "love" your spouse. The authors say the deck is stacked squarely against you and the solutions that might make it work, don't. If you're contemplating marriage or some long-term-committed-monogamy of another sort, read this book. This way you'll have the other point of view and won't feel bushwacked 10 years down the road. I'm not certain everything in here is 100% fact, although it is all based on fact. Some parts don't feel quite right, but much of it resonated strongly and clearly for me.

Competent review of relevant studies and writings leaving "what do I do?" to the reader. The content offers insight into both ideas supported by the available data and hypotheses and not. It also helped me understand the difference between what many want to believe and what is supported by available evidence.

The thing I enjoyed the most was the fact that the authors took a different, but not negative approach to the subject, too bad more academics does not in courage more open debate now days, rather than the herd approach!

This goes on my special shelf, along with Andrew Weil's classic on drug use, The Natural Mind. Mind blowing. Life changing. The book as a whole reads like a loving, insightful gift, the back of the puzzle magazine where the answers are. I urge you to read it, and then make some noise about it.

This book is utterly amazing in its depth and thoroughness. It was a real eye opener for me. The authors did a stellar job of researching every aspect of every facet of the myths and misticism that has surrounded human sexuality.

Enjoyable read and a solid argument why men and women are not naturally designed to be monogamous . The only thing lacking is more reference artifacts of the hunter gatherers and more theories about how monogamy .

Within the first two chapters or so it becomes apparent that the author(s) are trying to make the weaker argument appear the stronger. It sometimes reads like they don't really believe their premise themselves. The "zingy" prose style leads a serious reader to suspect its true motives.

Human sexuality is -- needless to say -- "complex." We're obviously not purely mate-for-life monogamous at a raw, biological level. But the swingin' free-love authoritative past posited here is also an oversimplification, and seems primarily fantasy. A better argument would be that as humans we have an innate need to maintain an ideal (monogamy) while constantly permitting ourselves to fall far short of achieving the ideal. But such complexity seems to evade this sensationalist work.

Only about half way through the book so far but it is a very unique look at human development, development of agriculture, society and the things that happened in human history that lead us to the society structures that are used today.
Very educational and easy to get completely engrossed in. I definitely reccomend this for anyone who is interseted in human relationships.
Even though it's a very educational book it's still a pretty easy read as well.

In this brilliant and superbly written book, the authors draw on scientific research to question the validity of the standard narrative about human sexuality. This is a must read for those who think (and know) that monogomy may not be all that it's cracked up to be.

So much to think about with this book. The author has a great sense of humor and the approach is a common sense one. It won't change a thing about my monogamous self except that I might be less judgemental.

The most interesting book that I have ever read. It explains and documents why I have been so sexually frustrated during my two long term marriages. I'm single again and on the prowl and I Guarantee one and all I will not fall into the marriage trap again unless It is an open marriage.

A very well-cited exploration of pre-agricultural human sexual history, with explanations for many of the troubling questions we all seem to have. Even happily monogamous relationships will probably benefit from the points made.

Monogamy has become the "default relationship" expected from popular culture in the West. This book helps us to understand that our culture is trying to fit the square peg of human sexuality into a round hole, and failing miserably.

If we could just "get real" about human sexuality, then we'd be a lot better off.

I enjoyed and shared this book as I read . For years I felt and still do that my sexuality was controlled by my marriage . I have always enjoyed sex and no is often hurtful. As we have aged an survived infidelity ( his ) we enter a new phase were my sex life feels stolen . ( His love is there his body is not.) I'm not ready to retire and feel there was little sexual reward for faithfulness. Most long term marriages i know if have some infidelity - but as the marriages survived youre not supposed to acknowledge this . It not good for your kids to see your parents weaknesses, friends and family judgements can be overwhelming . So when you're hearing another's similar story your shocked "You"Too"/ The stigma to loving someone after someone has fallen , is similar to staying after DV. . I think this to is wrong . It's not realistic. Understanding human nature may set us free of shame and hurt.

A dry read with an exhaustive amount of pages (for the material). We incorporated this into a sexual health course I took in college but I don't think any of my class actually read the whole way through. Still wanted it for my library, however.

I've played the games, been married / been single, watched porn with pleasure, tried all the positions ... the only critic I believe is Himself, Dan Savage. If Mr Savage says: 'Read this book,' I read the book. Praise Allah, I read the book.

'Sex at Dawn' was delivered to my door yesterday, July 13. I snatched it up, sat down with it, scanned it. Bored ... too many charts and graphs. I signed up for a different kind of sex book - WasUpWidThis? I didn't sign on for charts and graphs -- didn't want a Brick of a book, I wanted a light, beach-summer, nice dirty book that would get me off on demand. And just so you know, Sex at Dawn got me off on demand....

Sex at Dawn is the penultimate, gold standard, scientific book written for you and for me - written from scientific studies the way WE talk - horny women, holy mackerel!, horny men.

So, DamnIt. Read this book! It makes sense. It'll take you from your junior high, East Coast conservative mentality into the adult world of .... 'Is this the only pair of breasts I'm ever going to see / feel for the Entire Rest of My Stinkin Life?' Conversely ... 'Is this the Last Cock I'm ever going to Desire?' We don't have the usual 2 choices - take it or leave it - There are alternatives. Consider the alternatives.

Buy the Book. Read the book. Review the book in your own words, as it is written. It's like voting - you don't deserve to Bitch if you don't stand up for who you are.

The most interesting book that I have ever read. It explains and documents why I have been so sexually frustrated during my two long term marriages. I'm single again and on the prowl and I Guarantee one and all I will not fall into the marriage trap again unless It is an open marriage.

A very well-cited exploration of pre-agricultural human sexual history, with explanations for many of the troubling questions we all seem to have. Even happily monogamous relationships will probably benefit from the points made.

Monogamy has become the "default relationship" expected from popular culture in the West. This book helps us to understand that our culture is trying to fit the square peg of human sexuality into a round hole, and failing miserably.

If we could just "get real" about human sexuality, then we'd be a lot better off.

I enjoyed and shared this book as I read . For years I felt and still do that my sexuality was controlled by my marriage . I have always enjoyed sex and no is often hurtful. As we have aged an survived infidelity ( his ) we enter a new phase were my sex life feels stolen . ( His love is there his body is not.) I'm not ready to retire and feel there was little sexual reward for faithfulness. Most long term marriages i know if have some infidelity - but as the marriages survived youre not supposed to acknowledge this . It not good for your kids to see your parents weaknesses, friends and family judgements can be overwhelming . So when you're hearing another's similar story your shocked "You"Too"/ The stigma to loving someone after someone has fallen , is similar to staying after DV. . I think this to is wrong . It's not realistic. Understanding human nature may set us free of shame and hurt.

A dry read with an exhaustive amount of pages (for the material). We incorporated this into a sexual health course I took in college but I don't think any of my class actually read the whole way through. Still wanted it for my library, however.

I've played the games, been married / been single, watched porn with pleasure, tried all the positions ... the only critic I believe is Himself, Dan Savage. If Mr Savage says: 'Read this book,' I read the book. Praise Allah, I read the book.

'Sex at Dawn' was delivered to my door yesterday, July 13. I snatched it up, sat down with it, scanned it. Bored ... too many charts and graphs. I signed up for a different kind of sex book - WasUpWidThis? I didn't sign on for charts and graphs -- didn't want a Brick of a book, I wanted a light, beach-summer, nice dirty book that would get me off on demand. And just so you know, Sex at Dawn got me off on demand....

Sex at Dawn is the penultimate, gold standard, scientific book written for you and for me - written from scientific studies the way WE talk - horny women, holy mackerel!, horny men.

So, DamnIt. Read this book! It makes sense. It'll take you from your junior high, East Coast conservative mentality into the adult world of .... 'Is this the only pair of breasts I'm ever going to see / feel for the Entire Rest of My Stinkin Life?' Conversely ... 'Is this the Last Cock I'm ever going to Desire?' We don't have the usual 2 choices - take it or leave it - There are alternatives. Consider the alternatives.

Buy the Book. Read the book. Review the book in your own words, as it is written. It's like voting - you don't deserve to Bitch if you don't stand up for who you are.

I found it to be incredibly boring and repetitive. The ENTIRE book seemed to be repeating statements of this nature - Anthropologists, Human Behaviorists, Psychologists, etc..., claim that humans pair bond and by nature are monogamists. These professionals base this on scientific research and known artifacts and literature. We (the authors) believe they are wrong. Why do we believe this? Just because. They do offer some silly illogical statements to back up their contrarian view, however it actually comes across as making you believe that the monogamist claims are correct.

I read this with a very open mind, but it was so poorly written and SO repetitive that I couldn't get through it, and it's very rare for me to not be able to finish a book.

One of the most concise books on Human Sexuality and its evolution. You want to understand BOTH sexes and how it might be easier to maintain intimacy with one another, THIS is the book to read. Funny, poignant, and full of information. I've read it twice and both times could not put it down.

I actually did not finish reading this book, which is rare for me. While I thought it was technically well written, I felt the authors wrote page after page trying to convince readers of their own viewpoint. It got very tedious after a while.

this is a book worth quoting and rereading. Take a chance...you may come away form this experience wiser...not in the frontal lobe realm, but in the area of the basic drives so powerful our intellectual brain is a mere servant.

Where do I start with this review? When I first read S@D over two years ago my mind was already in a good place to understand and accept the radical(?) ideas contained in this highly entertaining and very approachable book. Being married for 26 years gives you an interesting, no-nonsense perspective on monogamy, and being a very curious, open human being I instantly felt a kinship to the notion that we started out in small tribes of people who were all accountable to each other and collaborative for the intention of survival and child-rearing.

What I took away from the book beyond the all-too-obvious ramifications regarding sexual exclusivity is the fact that we have all been sold a bill of goods that is far-flung from our ancient origins. The "every man for himself" ideology has in many ways destroyed potential for the human race to move in altruistic directions, discouraged collaborative problem solving and not raising our children to feel that true sense of community and connection that creates a well-adjusted, peaceful society. The ideas in S@D go far beyond sex, and I feel personally that some folks have gotten so distracted by the sexual aspects of this book they overlook the fact that it completely turns the modern construct of society on it's ear. Take to heart that until the playing field is leveled for women to embrace their sexuality without the pressure of male-privilege looming over them, these open relationships are just an extension of an already broken system. The entire paradigm must change. Absolute equality is key. Non-monogamous relationships should bring MORE security to "marriages" and families, not less.

Speaking personally I have high hopes that this book will do more than sexually open marriages and relationships. I hope that people will take a less self-centered approach to how we live and look at creating stronger connections, communities and families. I have hope that S@D will open the dialog for couples to understand themselves better and not be afraid to discuss sexuality/needs/wants/desires with their mates. Just understanding the fact that there are deep-seated reasons for various attractions to people other than your mate creates a freedom and peace within yourself. Gone are the days of the destructive inner-dialog--"I'm not enough for him/her." The programming that we have been brought up with can be hard to overcome, and it's definitely a mind-melting proposition for many people to realize that everything we've been taught is absolutely wrong.

I lost count at how many copies of S@D I've given to friends, family and even complete strangers...I have had this message in my heart for far longer than this book has existed, but it certainly makes it easier to impart these concepts.

Aside from this optimism for the future I have gained from S@D I have also found some kindred spirits who have also read this book and felt moved by what was contained in those pages. For that I gratefully thank the authors.

Felt like the authors were being sarcastic throughout the entire book and telling me that 1) I am a monkey, 2) we can just screw who we want, and 3) that cheating and non-monogamous relationships should be the "norm". If you are a swinger, you'll love it. If you are a student being forced to read this... good luck.

I love critics. All the time they invested in studying the critic arts. Going to critic college. Getting their critic's degree. Then taking the time to set up critic social programs that teach inner city children the ins and out of becoming critics themselves, so as to further enrich society's cornucopia of, well...criticism. Oh, none of those things exist? Probably because critics are too busy spreading negativity and self loathing to truly make a positive difference in the world. Ok, now that that's been cleared up...*ahem*...

* If you've ever had your heart broken from a cheating other, read this book.
* If you've ever felt like you were trapped in a dead end relationship, but didn't know why you felt that way, read this book.
* If you've ever wanted more than your significant other seemed capable of providing, but felt selfish about asking, read this book.

Basically, anyone in a relationship anywhere should be aware of the text in Sex At Dawn. After my wife and I separated because I felt neglected and trapped, I went searching for answers. This book cleared up so many things that she and I were both unaware we were dealing with that we're now reestablishing the friendship we once had. Who knows if we'll ever be a couple again? The point is that we're both better people for having taken the time to research where our troubles stemmed from. And this book could've saved all that heartache had we read it before getting married.

I tip my hat to Ryan/Jetha for tackling a side of human nature that has been cast aside into the shadow of shame for far too long. Take control of your love life and give this book a chance. It will change your life, and the life of those you love, forever.

In Sex at Dawn: How We Mate, Why We Stray, and What It Means for Modern Relationships by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha, the authors set about the nearly impossible task of showing the “original” state of human sexual nature, and how our current culture cuts across that grain of this state, making us miserable. There are two main problems with this quest.

First, although the authors state, quite correctly, how varied human sexual arrangements are, both cross-culturally and at various times, they ultimately decide that our hunter gatherer ancestors led free sexual lives, and that is our real sexual “state”. The hunter gatherer social structure prevented monogamy in the modern sense; the paternity of a woman’s child was simply not important. That is why human males appear to evolved to engage in sperm competition. Sex was not exclusively tied to romantic love, but a more elastic act, used to cement the bonds of small groups of people.

Unfortunately, a true original “state” of any human behavior or social arrangement is very difficult to prove. The evidence is purely conjectural. We are pragmatic and fluid creatures; we mold our behavior to social, ecological and political circumstances. Do we really have such a thing as human nature?

Second, the authors do not stay true to their own model. Because of research about the different way men and woman perceive sex outside of a monogamous arrangement, they hold that woman must be accommodating to men in their efforts to provide themselves sexual novelty; they must do this in order to keep families together.

This is an odd ending, given what came before. They destroy the very premise they have built for three fourths of the book. Why? It confounds me.

Truth is we will never know what sex at dawn was like; given what we know about ourselves as a species, it was probably widely variable.

A fine and interesting work, but I didn't read very far before the irritation of not being able to click to read end-notes wrecked the experience for me. the store kindly refunded my money even though i was over the 7-day limit for returns.

Publishers, if you're going to charge damn near the hardcover rate for your ebook edition, you have to do more than just slap it into a scanner. An unlinked end-note is many times harder to look up in the ebook version than in a good old-fashioned paper book. You're not just throwing away an advantage of the medium, you're actually making it worse. In a $0.99 version I'd skip it, but at the already high price, it's just plain defective.

I find it jarring when a book contains sloppy errors like: "The year 1968 ... began with the 'velvet revolution' in Prague ... Robert Kennedy was felled on a Los Angeles stage."

It was "The Prague Spring" that took place that year, whereas the Velvet Revolution was in 1989. And RFK was fatally shot in a hotel kitchen.

If the authors and editors failed on such easily-checked data points (I knew those were incorrect without even looking them up), I can't help but doubt their credibility with harder-to-verify claims.

It's a shame, because Ryan and Jethá do put forth some interesting ideas; I just have no idea whether they are grounded in fact.

This book is pretty terrible. One of my friends recommended it to me and it just seems like a bunch of extremely illogical opinions pretending to be fact. I would have no problem with it if it was written more as an opinion book but it comes across like an authority telling me the world is flat. I couldn't even read the whole thing.

Drs. Ryan and Jethá have accomplished the rhetorical equivalent of barging into a cocktail party for evolutionary psychologists (EPers) and turning over every table, setting them all on fire, stripping naked, and having sex in front of the flames while the "oontz oontz oontz" of the dance music continues into the night and the shocked partygoers stare at the horny couple thinking "OK WTF do we do now?"

EPers HATE this book. Professional EPers merely hate it. Alternative-right sex-negative social darwinist armchair EPer scumbags REALLY hate it. People who think of themselves as successfully monogamous feel all butthurt that their sacred lifestyle is under attack. The other 97% of the population have to be thinking "excellent, let's call all our friends up and schedule an orgy on Friday."

Yes, this book oversimplifies the science on the subject. Pretty hilariously in spots. So what? It contains JOKES, for crying out loud. Good ones, I might add. And therefore this could not possibly be a serious review on the science, and anyone who decries it for representing itself as such is merely silly. No, this is not a work of hard science. It is more of a psycho-political work, much in the spirit of Fanon or Sartre, but applied to matters of the groin rather than colonialism and postmodern meaninglessness and other depressing stuff like that.

Really, there is only one point to this book: the human world post-agriculture is a stultifying, miserable, nightmarish place, and the highly industrialized world of the 21st Century is quadruply so, so you might as well not feel bad about being horny. And it's a great point. If you, yourself, are polyamorous, THIS is the book you should have your friends read, not "The Ethical Slut" or "Loving More" or any of that other self-congratulatory nonsense.

Sex Before Dawn, by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha, is a befuddling book. It sets out to do three things - to challenge the belief that humans evolved as a monogamous species, to argue that agriculture and industrialization have forced us into monogamous patterns that cause relationship discord, and to suggest an alternative model of multipartner mating patterns for human beings. To do this, they propose an examination of the sexual behaviors of hunter gatherer tribal groups, great apes, and a review of archaeological evidence. While the authors do provide some strong arguments and evidence, other parts of their work don't stand up to scrutiny, and I would be very cautious about drawing strong conclusions.

The core problem of the book is their logical errors. The authors doe a good job of making their first two arguments in the book - they suggest through primate and tribal group studies that humans are not necessarily monogamous, and that monogamous patterns wouldn't have been advantageous for early humans. They highlight that social adaptations and flexibility in humans would likely have led to more promiscuous patterns, not dissimilar from bonobos. The authors succeed in showing that the onset of agriculture, industry, and capitalism would create new types of insecurity that would make monogamous mating strategies more advantageous (though this seems to downplay the existence of property rights in pre-agricultural societies, which doesn't mesh well with the fossil record). But then, inexplicably, the authors downplay the flexibility of human sexual behavior, suggesting that our early adaptations to promiscuous patterns necessitate continued promiscuity. This is particularly frustrating because, early in the book, the authors use the flexibility of human sexual behavior to challenge the traditional narrative of genetic competition. It seems they want to have their cake and eat it too.

The other problem with the book is in the writing. Readers will come to the end of a well written and researched section on a complex topic, and then the authors will pepper in incorrect or grossly missummarized "facts" from other fields (for example, the authors seem to be unaware of the entire academic field of family studies and rely purely on pop culture images of marriage counselors), and then pepper in crude jokes that are tonally jarring. These make it hard for a reader to feel like the authors are really credible - if they're making errors on easily verifiable claims about child abuse risk or divorce statistics, and then punctuating it with dick jokes, then why should we give credence to their nuanced claims about copulatory vocalizations?

Again, I don't want to dismiss the book out of hand - I do think there are good points and information hidden within it. But I don't think there's enough here to support the author's case, and I don't think the authors have fully thought through their logic. When they do, a more rigorous and better edited book could make a real impact.

I found this book to be interesting and thought-provoking. I appreciated the ample references (scientific and other wise) the authors provided. Though the book covers a complex and sensitive subject, the authors do so with grace. It was a page turner for me and I recommend it to anyone interested in human sexuality.

*** I've read some of the negative reviews here, and found some of their claims and accusations to be so unfounded that I wonder if some of the negative reviewers have even read the book at all.

Sex at Dawn is a popular exposition of the simple and compelling thesis that a casual sexuality was the norm for our hunter-gatherer forbears, and that faithful pair-bonding in the form of monogamous marriage is alien to our sexual natures as human beings. The authors hold that the shift to the norm of faithful pair bonding arose only upon the advent of settled agriculture some 10,000 years ago. Moreover, they argue, "promiscuous impulses remain our biological baseline, our reference point" (p. 46), and society would be better off if we acknowledged the ubiquity of these impulses and offered them social approbation.

Ryan and Jethá justify their position mostly by deploying anecdotal and unsystematic anthropological evidence, and the authors have no anthropological credentials. Their style of argumentation is highly informed and informative for novices (I am not an anthropologist, but I have read widely in the professional anthropological literature), but it is completely unsystematic, and hence untrustworthy. I call it "Google research" because the data appears to flow from Googling one or two terms, such as "sex anthropology" and "human sex primate sex" and then cherry-picking the millions of citations.

Despite their lack of systematic research, the authors' conclusions from the anthropological literature are usually not far from the truth. The notion that we can infer from our genetic predispositions how we should behave, however, is simply illogical. Humans form strong pair bonds and humans, like members of almost every other species that forms strong pair bonds (including, for instance, almost all nesting birds) often cheat on their partners. But this fact does not imply that this behavior should be morally sanctioned or social encouraged. The most we can legitimately conclude from the evidence is that it is probably in the interest of a healthy and happy populace that lapses in fidelity be treated leniently.

Ryan and Jethá site several instances of societies which follow their ideal of relaxed sexuality, but they go too far in claiming that pair bonding is an effect of modern society in general and settled agriculture in particular. Pair bonding appears to be quite universal throughout human societies, whether in the form of monogamy, polyandry, or polygamy. By contrast, there is no pair-bonding primate species in Africa and only such species in Asia. It thus is plausible that pair bonding is a strong part of our genetic predisposition as a species, but that it arose rather late in our evolution as a species. This is not Ryan and Jethá's story, but it is fairly close, and I think much more defensible.

Amusingly, while Ryan and Jethá spout facts that are well known in the literature, they set themselves up as brave iconoclasts, overturning what they call the "standard narrative of human sexual evolution" (p. 7), which with its emphasis on the centrality of faithful pair-bonding. The standard story, they claim "hides the truth of human sexuality behind a fig leaf of anachronistic Victorian discretion repackaged as science" (p. 35). The fact is that there is no standard narrative that I know of in the contemporary scientific literature. Rather, human sexuality is clearly highly plastic, and we can learn little from other species because sexuality is even more plastic across primate species. The authors' mocking of anthropological opinion is particularly disingenuous because most of their argumentation is based on the work of professional anthropologists.

Sexual behaviors that we share with all or most primate species are likely to represent genetic predispositions. There is no question but that each primate species has a genetically specified range of sexual behaviors. We know this because this range of behaviors does not vary much across even widely separated groups. However, primate sexuality is highly variable across species. Therefore we cannot say that we are more like the polymorphically sexual Bonobos and the promiscuous chimpanzees than other more sexually discriminate primate species. However, true monogamy is very rare in both primates and sexually mating species in general, and the physiology of human male genitals suggests much male sperm competition, which strongly supports the thesis that strong pair bonds were regularly accompanied by a significant level of extra-pair copulations.

Some of the points the authors raise involve interesting questions that I cannot resolve. They assert that early human males were not concerned with parentage, which would make us unlike any other species I can think of. Of course, this position is necessary for Ryan and Jethá because it alone is compatible with the relaxed and tolerant attitude towards extra pair copulations that they consider the human norm. I rather suspect that humans are more like other pair-bonding species, in which males attempt to be promiscuous but are deterred by their mates, and females are carefully policed to reduce their opportunities for extra-pair mating. Despite the efforts of all parties in pair-bonded species, lots of extra-pair mating takes place, but sexuality is hardly tolerant and relaxed. However, there are several so-called "partible paternity" societies in which fathering is widely shared by males, who are tolerant of their mate's extra-pair sexuality. While this fatherly behavior must be taught to young men and is highly socially controlled the existence of these societies clearly shows that humans are capable of embracing a wide range of socio-sexual norms, however frequently they are honored in the breach.

Ryan and Jethá believe that it is an important part of their argument that our hunter-gatherer ancestors were fundamentally peaceful, war playing little role in everyday life and social organization. "hierarchical, aggressive, and territorial behavior is of recent origin for our species. It is...an adaptation to the social world that arose with agriculture." (p. 76). The reason, they argue, is that without private property, there was nothing to fight over. I believe this is just dead wrong. The archeological evidence points to a high level of warfare in hunter-gather societies. The goals of violent inter-group aggression were attaining valued, currently highly productive territory (e.g., a mountain pass) and obtaining women for mating, gathering, and child-rearing (see my book with Samuel Bowles, A Cooperative Species, Princeton 2011). The authors' evidence is scattered and mostly anecdotal, whereas our analysis is quite systematic, drawing on a large body of statistical evidence.

Ryan and Jethá are rather sloppy writers but they are good story-tellers, so this book is definitely worth reading.

THE BEST BOOK !!!
TEAR DOWN THE MYTHS.
It is appalling how much female sexuality has been repressed for thousands of years. Our culture is still based in male pleasure and dominance. They imprisoned the doctor who discovered the clitoris in the 1500's. What does that say? If you needed any more evidence that patriarchy exists and does great damage, is full of falsehoods, read this book.

I love the insight into how other cultures view sex and relationships. We lived 175,000 years being non-monogomous in small hunter gatherer bands. Now we have social isolation and I wonder how it all can be applied so that we can have more fulfilling sex and love lives.

I'm a little shocked at the overt engender bias in this book. Maybe I'm missing something here, but the implied reader is most certainly a (white) male: the authors make cheeky little jokes with women and wives as the punch-line and unrestrained male sexuality as the inside joke, reference studies that surveyed male tribal sexuality, not women's, and frame human sexuality from a male point of view. Now, though my personal interests in reading about sexuality did, in fact, stem from a desire to better understand male sexuality in particular, this kind of writing in the 21st century is really gross. The book was, obviously, written with such a strong agenda, that it actually subverts the message itself, and makes the authors seem untrustworthy -- which, from what I'm reading in Sex and Dusk, they actually may be? The tone is that this entire book was written to justify their own personal sexual proclivities.

I deleted the book from my kindle and am reading Sex and Dusk instead.

This is an amusing and light read, salted with sarcastic quips and, of course, covering a salacious topic. It endeavors to refute the "common wisdom" of just about every field (history, biology, anthropology, etc.) on the subject of human mating systems, and while it appears to succeed here and there, it is largely done by attacking an exaggerated straw man, or by refuting overstatements made in popular science books or in newspaper articles. The lion's share of sources includes the likes of Matt Ridley, Desmond Morris, E. O. Wilson, and Richard Dawkins -- authors who (1) are rarely actively pursuing primary scientific research in what they write about, and (2) are writing for the general public, with, naturally, a tendency to exaggerate and generalize -- so these popular texts are easy targets. At times, Ryan and Jethá demonstrate an imperfect understanding of evolution (e.g. no evolutionary biologist needs to ask the rhetorical question at the end of the middle paragraph on p. 53); at other times they allow inconsistencies to slip by unaddressed. For example, if the true state of hunter-gatherer humans is to share everything, show no jealousy, and for women not to barter with sex, how is it that the bride and groom at a Canela marriage must be instructed not to be jealous (p. 138), or that a Canela bride-to-be participates in orgies in exchange for meat (p. 120)? Overall, it's an entertaining, quick read, but not without flaws in some of its claims and conclusions.

The biggest shortcoming of this book is its epistemological framework: it seeks to uncover our true "human nature," but "human nature" itself is a flawed concept, and early sociobiologists were long-ago admonished for using this term. Biologists know that phenotype (i.e. what gets expressed) is a function of genotype (the genes), the environment (the sum of all external influences, food, temperature, etc), and ontogeny (our development). In its simplest form, any given genotype has a phenotype that responds in complex and varied ways relative to the environment -- this is known as a "norm of reaction" ([...]). When barley is grown a low altitude it behaves very differently form when it's grown a high altitude -- so it makes little sense to ask "what is the true nature of barley" because there is no such thing. Seeking the "true nature" of a species is a holdover from ancient notions of Greek essentialism, which we now know is fundamentally wrong. It is just as "natural" for an all-sharing-commune to also share sex freely, or for a married couple (where the husband invests considerable paternal care) to desire sexual exclusivity (even if this is not always achieved), or for new brides to willingly join in the polygynous family of a wealthy and powerful man -- i.e., depending on the environment, we should expect humans to behave quite differently, and each case is just as "natural" as any other. There is no single "human nature" to be discovered -- at best, we can say that there is a norm-of-reaction to be discovered.

Humans have clearly evolved complex and distinct behaviors capable of responding differently in each distinct environment. That by itself is remarkable, and although Ryan and Jethá are convincing when then claim that bonobo-like behaviors were common in human pre-history, they fail to show that human pre-history did not also include quasi-monogamy (as is now dominant), serial-monogamy, and various degrees of polygyny. Given the wide range of habitats that humans lived in (tundra, boreal forest, rain forest, savannah, estuaries, island archipelagoes, etc) it certainly should not surprise us that humans have adapted to a multitude of different circumstances. Ryan and Jethá argue that a history of intense sperm competition is written on our bodies -- and that may well be true, but it's not incompatible with quasi-monogamy, serial-monogamy, or polygyny. Who can say how many children, born to the king's concubines, were actually fathered by the game-keeper? And if, as some studies claim, some 10% to 20% of kids are not actually the children of the fathers who think they are his children, that by itself is more than enough selection pressure to evolve larger testicles. Finally, the two-fold size difference in European and Asian testicles would seem to imply that some radically different mating systems were present in the pre-agricultural years during the separation of these two populations.

Finally, Ryan and Jethá are guilty of the naturalistic fallacy -- believing that what is "natural" is also good. They may deplore the frustrated husbands who seek out porn to quiet their bonobo impulses, but how about the frustrated bullies who suffer in prison for merely exercising their evolution-given muscles to resolve a dispute? Surely many a dispute in pre-history was resolved by men using brute force to the reproductive advantage of the winner, which is why men are more muscular than women. Does that make it unfair for us to outlaw crime or domestic abuse? Why should promiscuity be any more "natural" than bulling?

Nonetheless, the general point that humans need to learn to relax about social morays is a good one. We are certainly capable of far greater latitude in our mating behaviors than what our priests, politicians, and grandmothers would have us believe. The advent of reliable contraception and an increasing number of self-sufficient women in the workplace ought to allow society to attenuate urges of sexual jealousy and liberalize our relationships -- but without having to give up our privacy, possessions, and suburban homes in favor of communes.

When my book club chose this book a lot of people were very excited and some that had read it before praised it. I was determined to give it a try even though I am not really one to enjoy reading non-fiction. I feel like this book could have been half the length. It is filled with redundant arguments and unnecessary criticisms of other scientists' findings. I half appreciated/loathed the snarky tone of the authors. It made it a little bit more interesting to read, but like I said a lot of the criticism of other scientists' findings was unnecessary. I don't need to know about every scientist that disagrees with you and why they are wrong. Just tell me what you found and why you think you are right. I don't disagree with the main idea of the book that humans were not originally monogamists and they used to be very egalitarian. I buy that, but things have changed. This book offers no solutions to happiness in the world today, it just laments constantly on how low we've sunk since our hunter-gather times and how wrong every scientist throughout history has been.

My first inclination is to say: avoid this book. What I will say is: avoid this book if you are not going to read "Sex At Dusk" right afterwards. That "Sex At Dawn" is well-written makes it all the more dangerous.

Ryan and Jetha have written what can only be called a tendentious book. They have an agenda, and they will not let anything get in the way of that agenda. Their premise is that monogamy, or pair-bonding, is not the natural state of human beings. Rather it came into being with the advent of agriculture about 10,000 years ago. Their main evidence is the observed behavior of peoples still living as hunters and gatherers, or foragers, and of chimpanzees and especially bonobos (which are smaller genetic cousins of chimpanzees). They also bring up supposed facts about the way evolution works.

The problem with the evidence they cite is that it is bogus. I am reminded of the old saw: it's not what you don't know that harms you, it's what you know that isn't so. You will think you know a lot of things after reading this book, but what you think you know isn't so. One of the problems is that neither Ryan or Jetha is a biologist, and they do not seem to understand how genetic evolution works. But the main problem is the way they quote their sources. Instead of giving us all the relevant findings of their various sources, mostly anthropologists, they cherry pick this or that sentence or paragraph. This is all laid out in great detail by Saxon in her book "Sex At Dusk." When you get the full picture, it seems to prove the opposite of what Ryan and Jetha think it proves.

Ryan and Jetha reject Thomas Hobbes' views that in a state of nature humans are in a "war of all against all" and that prehistoric human life was "solitary, poor, nasty, brutish and short." They put his comments down to his rather difficult life. They envisage prehistoric foragers as living a life of perpetual mating of all with all. People in these small groups had sex with all who were old enough, and children were cared for communally. It did not matter who fathered whom. According to the authors, the same is pretty much true of bonobos who they take to be the animals most like ourselves. It is only with the advent of agriculture that men seemed concerned about whether they indeed fathered a certain child. But this is contrary to the views of just about every anthropologist who has ever written on the subject, as Saxon points out. If we look at the actual facts, for hunters and gatherers it is sex that is typically "nasty, brutish and short," especially for the women. Even when rape is not involved (and it often is) there is little concern for the pleasure of the woman. In many societies women will have sex for extra food, usually meat. And there is one tribe where, when a girl reaches puberty, she is subjected to sex with all able-bodied males in the community in order, it seems, to build solidarity among the male hunters. (One is reminded of members of a male sports team sharing women.) In many primitive tribes, sex is "nasty, brutish and short" for the men as well. The idea of primitive human societies being communal sexual paradises may sound good until you start to think about it a little. There would be widespread incest, and some other developments which Saxon discusses.

Ryan and Jetha are really extrapolating back from the sexual free-for-all of today in the industrialized cultures to the way prehistoric foragers must have lived. What they seem to forget is that only in approximately the last century have men and women had sex merely for pleasure. This came about due to the advent of condoms in the first half of the twentieth century and the pill in the second half. Before this, wealthy or noble men may have enjoyed sex merely for pleasure, but it is unclear that any women did, even courtesans. And even today, something which Ryan and Jetha probably would not admit, having sex merely for pleasure is still more of man's game. Yes, men and women really are different, and while men may always be happy with recreational sex, women often use sex to gain other ends. As Saxon points out, this is true for pre-agriculture hunters and gatherers, foragers that existed up to modern times, and even female bonobos. Furthermore, forager men are concerned about who the father is, as are male great apes.

Ryan and Jetha mention all the cheating that goes on today, and also polyamorous relationships and swinging. They point out that female chimps, bonobos and other animals will have sex with more than one male, even when they are in pair-bonds. But what is this all supposed to prove? As many anthropologists have noted, pair-bonding was a great boon to early humans. And as Saxon shows, in a multitude of ways it actually led to the survival and development of human societies.

Neither Ryan and Jetha nor Saxon discusses the one society in the ancient world where paternity did not seem to matter much. Perhaps I should say that paternity mattered, but it could involve someone other than the husband. It was the odd society of Sparta. Polyandry was known there, and the main job of women was to give birth to healthy children, especially boys. The children were raised almost entirely by the mother until they were seven. At that point boys went to live in barracks for military training, but girls continued to live with the mothers. Husbands did not spend much time at home, especially before they were thirty. Although women could own land and had an indirect say in societal decisions, I do not think either Ryan or Jetha would have liked living there. While husbands sometimes gave permission for their wives to have sex with other men, it was not a sexual free-for-all, although some Athenian writers portrayed it that way. The goal was more healthy children, males preferred.

The main benefit of monogamous relationships is in the raising of the next generation. This is true whatever society is involved. Ryan and Jetha put a lot of emphasis on the Musuo of China where fathers do not live with their children's mother and instead the mother and her extended family raise the children. But this is the exception that proves the rule. And Ryan and Jetha do not give us a truthful account this society, describing sex there as a cross between one night stands and friends with benefits, portraying it as matriarchal when it is really patriarchal, and not mentioning the many negatives. Men will work hard for and defend their own children and their mate. There is another benefit to pair-bonding, and this was as true in foraging societies as it is today. Inbreeding avoidance must have arisen very early (since it exists even in chimp and bonobo groups). As it does today when people marry out of their extended family, joining a new group helped to solidify ties between families in different groups, a good thing for survival. People tend to care about their own.

Let me repeat again that if you are going to read this book, it will be smart to read Saxon's as well. In fact, you can just read Saxon's as she goes through this book almost page by page. You will find out from Saxon's book that the tendency to pair-bonding is most likely genetic, and it arose long before the development of agriculture and probably in our pre-human ancestors. You will find out many other interesting facts as well.

Update. The commercial success of "Sex At Dawn" seems to have motivated Daniel Bergner to expand his 2009 "NY Times" article "What Do Women Want?" into a book of the same name. Only the book seems to go way beyond the scientific findings covered in the article. According to Bergner, women not only match men in sexual desire, but even surpass them. Instead of female bonobos, female rhesus monkeys are Bergner's animal of choice. The website "Salon" has an interview of Bergner by Tracy Clark-Flory (June 1, 2013), and if you are a masochist you can read through his convoluted and at times almost incoherent answers. The take-away is that women are no more fitted for monogamy than men.

I've picked this book hoping it adds something to the field of evolutionary psychology. It turned out that no, it does not add anything.

It was quickly became apparent that the authors are biased. In fact, the first 10% of the book (as measured by Kindle) are devoted to attacking "standard narrative" of evolutionary psychology without really introducing it. Then, things become somewhat better, with a number of facts I did not knew, described in good language. Ultimately, authors claim that it is "natural" for humans to have unrestricted sex, with no preferences, competition or conflict.

Now, that conclusion is pretty bizarre. People express quite strong preferences and competition and conflict, and form pairs everywhere, and it hard to assume that these impulses are purely cultural, and introduced just recently, in agricultural period. Given that the conclusion makes no sense, the exact logical problems in the narrative are of secondary importance, but I particularly noticed that they make no distinction between what was "natural" (that is, adaptive) million years ago in the middle of Africa, and what is adaptive these days in the middle of a city. They also confuse "natural" with "good". With all that, I'd give 3 stars, just for new information.

But then, I read "Sex at Dusk". That book demonstrates most facts in "Sex at Dawn" to be very selectively picked from the references. When those references are slightly expanded, we find that peaceful bonobo actually have conflicts, and the nice tribes have not so nice rituals, and so forth. Maybe, in some cases we can talk about different interpretation, overall, it looks most of the foundation of "Sex at Dawn" is destroyed.

Seems like this is not a scientific book, but rather pure fiction.

After MUCH deliberation and soul searching I made the switch to polyamory last year. It's certainly not for everyone, but I've always felt monogamy was sort of un-natural... NOW I UNDERSTAND WHY!!! This book is so illuminating. It makes such a convincing and logical case for man's natural mode for loving relationships being open and sharing. I'm blown away. Excellent read, though certainly on the academic side, but easy to digest and broken down into easy to follow chunks. Excellent work by the author for a massive subject.

Very disappointing book. The authors compare the behaviour of primitive societies with modern life. Apples and pineapples is what you get with the not surprising conclusion that primitives are more apt to act on their sexual impulses like the animals they also cite in this book. No mention of ethical or moral thinking on sexual behaviour and its impact on a more satisfied life. In fact, married, faithful Catholics report the highest degree of sexual satisfaction but you would not find that in this tome. The whole thing reads like an apology for polygamy, polyandry or fornication. I am not a prude, but I wasted my money on this.

This book is an entertaining and provocative look into human sexuality. It should not be considered Scholarly and it is at times hard to take seriously. At some points one wonders if the authors believe the conclusions they're drawing from the evidence or if they noticed the contradictions in what they've written. But the authors are funny and its amusing read where you aren’t face palming. They do a good job, not of proving their case with the science but of rhetorically convincing you that something is amiss in the western cultures approach to human sexuality. Something which is not really hard to do, especially among the readers of this book who likely have doubts about the Wests current approach to relationships anyway.
The problems with the rest of the book are too numerous to list and other reviews have done a pretty good job anyway. For the astute pop science reader it will leave you with many more questions than it answers both about the topic in question and about the book itself. These errors are compounded by the fact that this book is wildly popular. Its popularity suggest that people are hungry for a book that questions western cultures approach to sexuality and romance without basing its validity merely on people’s feelings. There is a grave need for both a scientific look at human sexuality in popular culture and an evidence based critique of what the authors of Sex at Dawn call the Standard Narrative. This however, is not that book.

This book makes a strong case that pre-agricultural humans were very far from monogamous, much like Chimps and Bonobos.

Some of the evidence comes from the difficulty that humans have being monogamous now, and the under-reported satisfaction of cultures that encourage egalitarian sharing of mates (including WWII pilots). Some stronger evidence comes from the size of our genitalia, and the promiscuous, egalitarian sex and reported absence of rape and war in our closest living relatives (Bonobos - have they really been observed well enough that we should expect to have seen rape and war?).

The book is highly critical of the Victorian version of marriage, but is somewhat approving of marriage as an institution if it's more like some non-English cultures where occasional sex outside of the marriage is considered to be fairly harmless.

They also claim there was little violence, because food was abundant and it was normally easier to move to unoccupied land than to fight over resources. They provide decent reasons not to trust arguments that supposedly demonstrate high levels of violence in primitive cultures, but they don't convince me they're any more objective than the people they criticize. The most questionable part of this section is their belief that the natural growth rate of pre-agricultural humans was unusually low. They have some plausible reasons for expecting a slower population growth rate than the 25 year doubling time that Malthus expected in the absence of resource constraints, but they don't come close to providing a good argument that Malthus was off by the factor of 10,000 that would be needed to reconcile the estimated pre-agricultural population growth rates with an absence of resource constraints. I get the impression that they imagine our direct ancestors had no competition from other hominids.

The book's back flap claims that it contains an explanation of why homosexuality hasn't been selected out of our genes, but the closest to that I could find in the book was a theory involving bonding which would explain bisexuality but not homosexuality.

I "read" this through audiobook, and it kept me highly engaged. I am a 23 year old young woman, and it really opened my eyes as to why men are the way they are. I think if other young women read it, it would reaffirm that society constantly imposes restrictions on us that are scientifically unfounded. We should embrace our sexuality and be unapologetic for it. In addition, it gives advice on what us women should be looking for in a partner and what to possibly expect in the long term. I don't know if the authors intentionally wanted to make a book that would explain why dating is so difficult nowadays by using millions of years of scientific evidence haha but thanks for that! The book also gives cultural and economic context in explaining sexuality! Best book ever, super entertaining!

I don't think I'm exaggerating if I claim that the world would be a better place if more people read this book. This should be required reading for everyone prior to entering the world of relationships - but fret not, it's not too late for you, even mature readers should find this enlightening.

Using a super-abundance of scientific evidence from the wide-ranging fields of anthropology, archaeology, anatomy, physiology, primatology, history and literature, authors Ryan and Jethá make a series of powerful and challenging points.

This book gets better and better as it goes. It also gets more and more convincing. Towards the beginning, I was a little bit put off by the tone, which felt to me a bit shrill and self-satisfied — like someone screaming, "the whole world is wrong and I'm the only one who gets it!" If you feel that way too during the first couple of chapters, please keep reading. The mood does eventually calm down and become more persuasive.

Sex at Dawn is mostly devoted to poking holes in "The Standard Narrative" — the widely held but deeply flawed assumptions about why "men are like THIS, women are like THAT" and why generally cherished beliefs about marriage and relationships are so totally messed up. This is a worthy mission; I pretty much agree with everything Doctors Jethá and Ryan have to say about what's wrong with the standard narrative and WHY it's wrong, and they back up their attacks with a lot of data.

They looked at many different cultures from the past and present to put this book together, and come up with some interesting conclusions that I hope will help to boost a healthy, ongoing conversation about what's "right" and "normal."

It's a horrific tragedy that so many people throughout the ages have been subject to oppression, mutilation, torture and execution in our War on Sex. Billions of lives have been negatively impacted by false information about how we are supposed to behave, how we are supposed to feel and what we are supposed to want. The 99% of people who do not find the standard narrative to be a natural fit end up feeling like failures or bad people. "There must be something wrong with me," they think.

Aside from the aggressive presentation, I only have two minor complaints. First, I wish that instead of barking, "'A' isn't the normal state of human behavior, 'B' is!" SaD would take the approach of saying, "there is no such thing as normal; everything from A to Z can be found among humans, and it's all OK." And second, I wish that SaD took that final step and actually advocated a more relaxed and non-judgmental sexual morality in the world. They always stop just short of that, suggesting we question the validity and soundness of the standard narrative without just coming right out and speaking the plain truth: human beings were simply not meant to operate within sexual boundaries set by anyone but themselves, and even those are subject to change with time and circumstances.

If you are a sexual traditionalist, this book will probably offend you. If you are sexually adventurous, progressive or nonconventional, then you will probably feel that it doesn't go quite far enough, but you will appreciate the enormous amount of strong factual content justifying their thesis.

Finally, I would like to add that the writing style is lively, engaging and often funny. It would be easy for a book like this to be very dry and academic, but the authors keep it brisk and use humor to add sparkle to subjects that would otherwise be boring or uncomfortable.

Don't let the title of this book shy you away from reading it. I realize that a certain percentage of the population may pass over this book because they don't want to be that person sitting in the corner at Starbucks reading a book that says 'SEX' in big letters on the cover. I even had my own reservations at first but I am so glad that I chose to give this book a chance.

Most of us have been told a narrative involving evolutionary tendencies that favored women being selective when it comes to mating patterns. We have been told that we evolved from monogamous ancestors and that we are hard wired to find one mate for the rest of our life and settle down. With that story sparks other questions as to why it appears that society does not play out that way. Why is it that if actions are louder than words, our actions don't appear to align with this story? Well, maybe it's because we have had that story wrong. Maybe we have been misinterpreting that narrative the entire time.

I am not a member of the swingers camp, and I don't intend on throwing all rules of relationships out the door, but this book did open my eyes to the origins of our modern sexuality and the roots in which we have developed our tendencies. However, I think this title sells the book short. This book was about so much more including how we develop attraction, how ancient societies took care of their young, and how we can move forward during this modern age and what some are calling the next generation "hook up" culture. Maybe we aren't crazy rebellious Gen Yers, perhaps we are on to something more, something rooted in biological ancestry.

This is a very interesting book that highlights the problems with the monogamy norm of today's society and the true nature of human sexuality. If you are in a relationship that lasts longer than a decade you can only agree. Even if it is not broken, Sex and attraction are on low flame or is it because I took the birth control pill while marrying? According to the book the pill affects mate choice.
The pill made me very sick BTW and changed my whole personality (from self-confident in somewhat like submissive, what just wasn't me anymore. It was absolutely frightening. It worsened into severe depressions. But back to the book:

The chain of proof is continuous throughout the whole book. Interesting are the studies on other cultures which even nowadays reflect the old hunter-gatherer societies, matriachal societies in which men are relaxed and content for the good of all as there are no wars, no rape and no murder.
Although it is a very scientific book it is easy to read, because it is entertaining as well with some humor. I am German. Hopefully this important book will be translated into the German language soon so that my friends (and later my kids) can read it. I would buy it again in German. It should be read by everyone. Keep an open mind. This could lead to a better society not in war against the own innermost nature anymore.

I've picked this book hoping it adds something to the field of evolutionary psychology. It turned out that no, it does not add anything.

It was quickly became apparent that the authors are biased. In fact, the first 10% of the book (as measured by Kindle) are devoted to attacking "standard narrative" of evolutionary psychology without really introducing it. Then, things become somewhat better, with a number of facts I did not knew, described in good language. Ultimately, authors claim that it is "natural" for humans to have unrestricted sex, with no preferences, competition or conflict.

Now, that conclusion is pretty bizarre. People express quite strong preferences and competition and conflict, and form pairs everywhere, and it hard to assume that these impulses are purely cultural, and introduced just recently, in agricultural period. Given that the conclusion makes no sense, the exact logical problems in the narrative are of secondary importance, but I particularly noticed that they make no distinction between what was "natural" (that is, adaptive) million years ago in the middle of Africa, and what is adaptive these days in the middle of a city. They also confuse "natural" with "good". With all that, I'd give 3 stars, just for new information.

But then, I read "Sex at Dusk". That book demonstrates most facts in "Sex at Dawn" to be very selectively picked from the references. When those references are slightly expanded, we find that peaceful bonobo actually have conflicts, and the nice tribes have not so nice rituals, and so forth. Maybe, in some cases we can talk about different interpretation, overall, it looks most of the foundation of "Sex at Dawn" is destroyed.

Seems like this is not a scientific book, but rather pure fiction.

After MUCH deliberation and soul searching I made the switch to polyamory last year. It's certainly not for everyone, but I've always felt monogamy was sort of un-natural... NOW I UNDERSTAND WHY!!! This book is so illuminating. It makes such a convincing and logical case for man's natural mode for loving relationships being open and sharing. I'm blown away. Excellent read, though certainly on the academic side, but easy to digest and broken down into easy to follow chunks. Excellent work by the author for a massive subject.

Very disappointing book. The authors compare the behaviour of primitive societies with modern life. Apples and pineapples is what you get with the not surprising conclusion that primitives are more apt to act on their sexual impulses like the animals they also cite in this book. No mention of ethical or moral thinking on sexual behaviour and its impact on a more satisfied life. In fact, married, faithful Catholics report the highest degree of sexual satisfaction but you would not find that in this tome. The whole thing reads like an apology for polygamy, polyandry or fornication. I am not a prude, but I wasted my money on this.

This book is an entertaining and provocative look into human sexuality. It should not be considered Scholarly and it is at times hard to take seriously. At some points one wonders if the authors believe the conclusions they're drawing from the evidence or if they noticed the contradictions in what they've written. But the authors are funny and its amusing read where you aren’t face palming. They do a good job, not of proving their case with the science but of rhetorically convincing you that something is amiss in the western cultures approach to human sexuality. Something which is not really hard to do, especially among the readers of this book who likely have doubts about the Wests current approach to relationships anyway.
The problems with the rest of the book are too numerous to list and other reviews have done a pretty good job anyway. For the astute pop science reader it will leave you with many more questions than it answers both about the topic in question and about the book itself. These errors are compounded by the fact that this book is wildly popular. Its popularity suggest that people are hungry for a book that questions western cultures approach to sexuality and romance without basing its validity merely on people’s feelings. There is a grave need for both a scientific look at human sexuality in popular culture and an evidence based critique of what the authors of Sex at Dawn call the Standard Narrative. This however, is not that book.

This book makes a strong case that pre-agricultural humans were very far from monogamous, much like Chimps and Bonobos.

Some of the evidence comes from the difficulty that humans have being monogamous now, and the under-reported satisfaction of cultures that encourage egalitarian sharing of mates (including WWII pilots). Some stronger evidence comes from the size of our genitalia, and the promiscuous, egalitarian sex and reported absence of rape and war in our closest living relatives (Bonobos - have they really been observed well enough that we should expect to have seen rape and war?).

The book is highly critical of the Victorian version of marriage, but is somewhat approving of marriage as an institution if it's more like some non-English cultures where occasional sex outside of the marriage is considered to be fairly harmless.

They also claim there was little violence, because food was abundant and it was normally easier to move to unoccupied land than to fight over resources. They provide decent reasons not to trust arguments that supposedly demonstrate high levels of violence in primitive cultures, but they don't convince me they're any more objective than the people they criticize. The most questionable part of this section is their belief that the natural growth rate of pre-agricultural humans was unusually low. They have some plausible reasons for expecting a slower population growth rate than the 25 year doubling time that Malthus expected in the absence of resource constraints, but they don't come close to providing a good argument that Malthus was off by the factor of 10,000 that would be needed to reconcile the estimated pre-agricultural population growth rates with an absence of resource constraints. I get the impression that they imagine our direct ancestors had no competition from other hominids.

The book's back flap claims that it contains an explanation of why homosexuality hasn't been selected out of our genes, but the closest to that I could find in the book was a theory involving bonding which would explain bisexuality but not homosexuality.

I "read" this through audiobook, and it kept me highly engaged. I am a 23 year old young woman, and it really opened my eyes as to why men are the way they are. I think if other young women read it, it would reaffirm that society constantly imposes restrictions on us that are scientifically unfounded. We should embrace our sexuality and be unapologetic for it. In addition, it gives advice on what us women should be looking for in a partner and what to possibly expect in the long term. I don't know if the authors intentionally wanted to make a book that would explain why dating is so difficult nowadays by using millions of years of scientific evidence haha but thanks for that! The book also gives cultural and economic context in explaining sexuality! Best book ever, super entertaining!

I don't think I'm exaggerating if I claim that the world would be a better place if more people read this book. This should be required reading for everyone prior to entering the world of relationships - but fret not, it's not too late for you, even mature readers should find this enlightening.

Using a super-abundance of scientific evidence from the wide-ranging fields of anthropology, archaeology, anatomy, physiology, primatology, history and literature, authors Ryan and Jethá make a series of powerful and challenging points.

This book gets better and better as it goes. It also gets more and more convincing. Towards the beginning, I was a little bit put off by the tone, which felt to me a bit shrill and self-satisfied — like someone screaming, "the whole world is wrong and I'm the only one who gets it!" If you feel that way too during the first couple of chapters, please keep reading. The mood does eventually calm down and become more persuasive.

Sex at Dawn is mostly devoted to poking holes in "The Standard Narrative" — the widely held but deeply flawed assumptions about why "men are like THIS, women are like THAT" and why generally cherished beliefs about marriage and relationships are so totally messed up. This is a worthy mission; I pretty much agree with everything Doctors Jethá and Ryan have to say about what's wrong with the standard narrative and WHY it's wrong, and they back up their attacks with a lot of data.

They looked at many different cultures from the past and present to put this book together, and come up with some interesting conclusions that I hope will help to boost a healthy, ongoing conversation about what's "right" and "normal."

It's a horrific tragedy that so many people throughout the ages have been subject to oppression, mutilation, torture and execution in our War on Sex. Billions of lives have been negatively impacted by false information about how we are supposed to behave, how we are supposed to feel and what we are supposed to want. The 99% of people who do not find the standard narrative to be a natural fit end up feeling like failures or bad people. "There must be something wrong with me," they think.

Aside from the aggressive presentation, I only have two minor complaints. First, I wish that instead of barking, "'A' isn't the normal state of human behavior, 'B' is!" SaD would take the approach of saying, "there is no such thing as normal; everything from A to Z can be found among humans, and it's all OK." And second, I wish that SaD took that final step and actually advocated a more relaxed and non-judgmental sexual morality in the world. They always stop just short of that, suggesting we question the validity and soundness of the standard narrative without just coming right out and speaking the plain truth: human beings were simply not meant to operate within sexual boundaries set by anyone but themselves, and even those are subject to change with time and circumstances.

If you are a sexual traditionalist, this book will probably offend you. If you are sexually adventurous, progressive or nonconventional, then you will probably feel that it doesn't go quite far enough, but you will appreciate the enormous amount of strong factual content justifying their thesis.

Finally, I would like to add that the writing style is lively, engaging and often funny. It would be easy for a book like this to be very dry and academic, but the authors keep it brisk and use humor to add sparkle to subjects that would otherwise be boring or uncomfortable.

Don't let the title of this book shy you away from reading it. I realize that a certain percentage of the population may pass over this book because they don't want to be that person sitting in the corner at Starbucks reading a book that says 'SEX' in big letters on the cover. I even had my own reservations at first but I am so glad that I chose to give this book a chance.

Most of us have been told a narrative involving evolutionary tendencies that favored women being selective when it comes to mating patterns. We have been told that we evolved from monogamous ancestors and that we are hard wired to find one mate for the rest of our life and settle down. With that story sparks other questions as to why it appears that society does not play out that way. Why is it that if actions are louder than words, our actions don't appear to align with this story? Well, maybe it's because we have had that story wrong. Maybe we have been misinterpreting that narrative the entire time.

I am not a member of the swingers camp, and I don't intend on throwing all rules of relationships out the door, but this book did open my eyes to the origins of our modern sexuality and the roots in which we have developed our tendencies. However, I think this title sells the book short. This book was about so much more including how we develop attraction, how ancient societies took care of their young, and how we can move forward during this modern age and what some are calling the next generation "hook up" culture. Maybe we aren't crazy rebellious Gen Yers, perhaps we are on to something more, something rooted in biological ancestry.

This is a very interesting book that highlights the problems with the monogamy norm of today's society and the true nature of human sexuality. If you are in a relationship that lasts longer than a decade you can only agree. Even if it is not broken, Sex and attraction are on low flame or is it because I took the birth control pill while marrying? According to the book the pill affects mate choice.
The pill made me very sick BTW and changed my whole personality (from self-confident in somewhat like submissive, what just wasn't me anymore. It was absolutely frightening. It worsened into severe depressions. But back to the book:

The chain of proof is continuous throughout the whole book. Interesting are the studies on other cultures which even nowadays reflect the old hunter-gatherer societies, matriachal societies in which men are relaxed and content for the good of all as there are no wars, no rape and no murder.
Although it is a very scientific book it is easy to read, because it is entertaining as well with some humor. I am German. Hopefully this important book will be translated into the German language soon so that my friends (and later my kids) can read it. I would buy it again in German. It should be read by everyone. Keep an open mind. This could lead to a better society not in war against the own innermost nature anymore.

The title of this book grabs your attention, its contents will shake you to your core.

As a context for this review, I am one who is predisposed to a very strong spiritual practice and perspective; raised Catholic but now Hindu by faith. At almost 47 yo, I've kissed only 2 men who are the only 2 I've been intimate with. I am not a prude but have felt intimacy of the body comes only after intimacy of the heart has taken hold of me. Yes, I was raised in an extremely conservative background (Asia).

On to the review itself...

What is absolutely remarkable about this book is how it manages to wholistically present and argue the 'forest' within which human sexuality exists as one of the 'flora and fauna' in humanity's history. The extensiveness that it encompasses the sociological, historical, ethnic aspects of the peoples of the globe to serve as its backdrop is fantastically mind boggling and impressive beyond belief.

Understanding how much of the debasing and demeaning rhetoric about the warlike, brutal and depressing data and studies on human nature by respected and established scientist, anthropologists, and other 'ogists' is actually NOT the whole truth is enlightening, to say the least. It is staggering to discover, much like a Sherlock Holmes novel or a an exciting 'whodunnit', where the roots of the prevaling paradigms of the darkness of man stems from and continues to be generated from.

My guru, Amma, always addresses all as beings of Divine Consciousness. Granted, this is a much more esoteric, metaphysical aspect than human sexuality. But what's fascinating here is how one is able to come to a 'geometerical logic' in 'connecting the dots', so to speak, and follow through how it came to be that beings of Divine Consciousness believe they are the most depraved, maniacal, self-serving and destructive creature on planet earth. This book does that in clear, concise, convincing, humorous and sometimes snarky language. No small task and also quite endearing, if you ask me.

Sexuality, I say, is no different than food, air and water. And though I I genuintely hold this as a truth, I have repeatedly withheld expressing moments of sexuality with someone because of fear, morality, judgments. I willing share time, affection, money and everything else but stop short of sex even when I have shared my guts,heart and soul with someone. There is a hypocrisy and a lie there. Recognizing this dissonance is the first step to being genuine to one's wholeness.

To the authors, I bow to the Divine with you. Your small book is like a nuclear bomb of love and wisdom in this day and age. My deepest heartfelt gratitude for your gift to all of us.

Interesting content, interesting topic.. The book is not written in an objective, scientific manner. Maybe it isn’t trying to be. There are too many quotes and too few statistics.

I’m a nerd that enjoys trolling through search engines such as PubMed looking for objective, fact based scientific articles with statistical analyses of weird and wonderful topics maybe in areas such as this. If you’re looking for that, this book isn’t that or anything like it.

It is extremely interesting however and makes for a good read nevertheless

This very popular and successful revision/refutation of long-standing ideas about ancient human sexuality has nonetheless encountered a strong and persistent stream of criticism, often from formidable sources. It is certainly true that the authors' conclusions fly in the face of contemporary anthropology, and that neither is an anthropologist. And it is true that some of their conclusions are based on data, but based on previous conclusions that are. The conclusion of the critics is that this constitutes "google" science: doing an Internet search for studies about a topic, then cherry-picking the results for the ones you like.

These criticisms miss the point. The authors are not attempting a scholarly assault on current knowledge; they are proposing a new frame within which to build better-integrated theory. Consciously stepping over the contemporary pothole of "Flintstonization" (the erroneous assumption that human society as it is today resulted from a steady linear progression), they take less for granted than their contemporaries, opening up new lines of inquiry that admit a very different view of human sexual evolution than what is found in today's textbooks.

The result is not a book full of new findings or old ones refuted; it's a demonstration of how scientific inquiry can be legitimately loosened up and subsequently expanded when the "Flintstone" assumption is set aside. For instance, it is common to draw from the social order of chimpanzees in understanding our own sexual origins; but stark comparisons of chimpanzee/human and bonobo/human strongly suggest that we are more akin to the bonobo, sexually and socially, if we set aside our "civilized" centuries.

Whether or not this book ends up overturning its predecessors remains to be seen. But like Jayne's "Origin of Consciousness" and Morgan's "Aquatic Ape," this book has tremendous value, even if its conclusions are incorrect, in promoting a fresh and thought-provoking perspective.

This book is written for the public and not for the scientific community and so on the one hand it is hard to criticize it for not being a rigorous review of the evidence. On the other hand the constant sarcastic tone and mocking of those who are much more rigorous and systematic is simply uncalled for then. You can't have it both ways.

I gave this book 4 stars because I want you to read it but I have serious reservations about it. I think it is very valuable in that it raises questions and legitimate questions about what the authors call "The Standard Narrative". However, it appears to me to be somewhat of a straw man they have set up to knock down. Regardless many of the questions they raise are good questions.

On the other hand their evidence is mostly anecdotal story telling and thus I simply cannot excuse the mocking and sarcastic treatment of serious scientific work. A little bit of the biting "humor" would be OK, but they go way over the line in the manner of their attacks, some of which appear to be completely off base. I constantly cringed at the tone of this book.

The authors seem to be in love with free-love and imagine a fantasy human heritage of bonobo like love-ins. Whether that is true or not the evidence is missing from this book other than speculation and "just-so" stories.

In my mind it is a flawed book but definitely worth reading for the questions it raises. The problem is it doesn't answer them in a rigorous way in spite of its pretense. If you can ignore the unnecessary derision of those who have a different view of the world than the authors, you might gain some insight into legitimate questions of our species sexual heritage.

I am now working through Sex at Dawn, a somewhat controversial book by the anthropological psychologist Christopher Ryan and medical doctor Cacilda Jetha. Some preliminary thoughts only a few chapters in: The book observes that 19th century England was a place where a woman and her body was sacred and holy, but you could purchase a 13 year old girl for a few shillings per hour to do with what you pleased; where the female body had never been so hidden from view, but every sculptor was judged by how well they could carve a naked body. The hypocrisy was rampant and nearly universal.

The 19th century philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer is quoted as saying: “There are 80 thousand prostitutes in London alone and what are they if not sacrifices on the altar of monogamy.” Victorian morals dictated that one should not defile decent women by having affairs or corrupting noble young women, go to prostitutes instead. It is very sad to me to contemplate the plight of Victorian-age prostitutes who must have been rampant with un- or under-treated sexually transmitted diseases. Hard to think of them as sacrifices on the altar of monogamy. It is fine and good to preach chastity before marriage and fidelity to one’s spouse afterwards. But history shows that this ideal will not be lived by many (most?). What is the societal cost of insisting on a standard that has never successfully been adhered to? The question is troubling.

The book points out that General Motors sells more graphic sex films through its subsidiary DirecTV (over $200 million/year in porn-related revenue) than the Hustler group of companies. Rupert Murdoch of FOX News fame (he also now owns the Wall Street Journal) makes more money from pay-per-view sex films than Playboy makes through its magazine, cable channel and internet businesses combined. AT&T sells pornography in over a million hotel rooms via its Hot Network. Marriott International counts porn sale revenue as a key profit center. The Victorian hypocrisy is at least equaled by our own modern obsession with porn—hidden though it might be.

But if porn consumption has replaced (largely) prostitution, isn't this a step in the right direction, away from one of the horrible costs of monogamy? (I don't know if this has happened—the question is raised in my mind.)

Everyone interested in prehistoric human behavior should read this book. It is not necessarily "right," but nothing else is "right" either. The book stands as a strong alternative viewpoint to Jared Diamond and Nicholas Wade. Since all 3 books are trying to build complete bodies from tiny fragments of skeleton, they all raise valid questions that demand answers. They likely all overstate their arguments and actual prehistoric behavior is nowhere near as war-torn as Wade suggests, or as free of violence as Sex at Dawn posits. Therefore, reading one without the others will give the reader a skewed perspective. This book's argument that human pair-bonding is the result of the recent rise of agriculture and associated concepts of property is more strongly supported than their argument that prehistoric humans were non-violent. However, this discussion needs to take place. There is nowhere near enough evidence for these positions to be dismissed without much more debate. It only gets 4 stars because it in places makes the same mistake it criticises others for: Trying to prop up their argument with emotion, rather than evidence. Specifically, in many places they disparage the "standard model" for its repugnancy, while criticizing proponents of pair-bonding of the same weakness.

An interesting collection of pseudo-science and compelling 'facts' about sexuality. The author starts out by claiming to have no agenda but by the end this is clearly a book promoting open relationships. Listen to any interview with the author if you want confirmation about his bias. Open relationships are fine but this sketchy 'science' doesn't go very far to prove that they are the best path forward for our species.

One of the fundamental building blocks of this book is that 'marriage is a failed institution' when >50% of marriages are ending in divorce. No one can dispute those stats but the authors conclusion is that the only successful alternative is open relationships. Really? There are plenty of statistics and studies that show open marriages fail at an even higher rate and yet the author doesn't mention any of those. What if the high rate of divorce in our society just means that long term relationships don't work? Maybe we don't need to become intensely promiscuous - maybe we just need to accept that we are likely to have many different relationships in our lives (monogamous or otherwise). The author contends that humans can only be truly satisfied with a variety of sexual partners at any time.

There is also a lot of discussion of the ultra-sexual bonobos as the best comparison for what human relations were meant to be. Not discussed is that bonobo 'sex' typically lasts under twenty seconds and ends with neither partner having an orgasm. Is that the kind of sexual connection we aspire to?

I also find it disingenuous that the author puts his wife on the cover as co-author. Listen to interviews with him where he is asked about this. He clearly added her name thinking that a female co-author would make the book more accessible to women and help increase sales. His wife had no part in writing this book.