Eve: How the Female Body drove 200 Million Years of Evolution’ by Cat Bohannon is an absolutely incredible, sweeping work of non-fiction. It does exactly what it says on the tin and repositions the evolutionary story to centre the female body and experience.

This book is chock-ful of information. I learnt some things I wish I didn’t, some of it is depressing and other bits hopeful. I loved the mix of facts and statistics with some artistic flair and personal experience thrown in. It covers EVERYTHING and it does so in enough detail to make it worthwhile, but ensuring the depth doesn’t overwhelm you.

And it’s not just historical. It talks about how evolution has influenced our daily experience. It talks about how women and our experiences are sidelined by science and research (and just like more generally the world). But despite some of this being really quite depressing, it feels hopeful. The book itself marks an important shift!

It’s beautifully written and really does suck you in. This is one of the best non-fiction books I’ve read! If you haven’t picked this one up yet, I strongly recommend giving it a go. It really is a masterpiece.

I really liked the premise of this book but I felt like the last few chapters, particularly the last chapter on love, didn’t follow the structure of finding an “Eve” for each trait. I found the last chapter particularly speculative.

Eve is a fantastic read for anyone interested in women's history - and by that I mean prehistory, how women evolved. From the first chapter, on a small egg-laying burrowing mammal producing liquid through adapted skin patches for her nurslings, we see how the female body arose and how one small successful step drove another one.

Some chapters are not for the young reader, but all regard physiology as part of an evolving life and situation, in which the female of the species did her best to produce healthy offspring and train them for life. We see the internal adaptations and the growing brain, the hormones of puberty, motherhood, and the change of lite at menopause. Why older women are usetul, why the wet nurse was responsible for explosive population growth in early farming towns.
Plenty I knew, also plenty I did not know, all of which made perfect sense.

Finally the author looks at how medical science has not been testing anything much on women - for good reasons of course, mostly around childbearing
- and many objects were not designed with women in mind. And how today, in some parts of the world, women and girls are 'last to eat, last to be educated' to quote another book I am reading. The shortsightedness of undervaluing the mothers of the next generation is, says the author, borne out by the lack of scientific progress among such cultures.
Feeding the girl today gives her the store of nutrients to provide large brains, strong bones and good physique to her sons and daughters. The Eve today is the Eve of the next generation.
Science papers are quoted throughout and many books are also referenced, right up to today's discoveries about disease, immunity, brown and white fats, and why women store vitamins from cod liver oil. I enjoyed Eve and hope to read more by this author.

I found this book so fascinating and detailed. It took me a long time to read as it was written in such depth, I could only read a bit at a time.
I loved how it was told chronologically to begin with to explore how we came to evolve from the early mammals to now.
I found it we’ll researched and accessible to read.
Truly fascinating!

I’ll admit that I went into this book warily. It’s intimidatingly long, and non-fiction science books can sometimes be dense tomes that make your head hurt.

Not in this case though! Yes it’s long, but it’s exactly the right length for the information covered, and it never once dragged. It’s engaging, funny, poignant, and really really interesting. It’s the sort of non-fiction book that forces everyone I speak to for a fortnight after to be met with, “so fun fact about primate gynaecology…”

Taking us back to the end of the dinosaur era, Bohannon examines how the female body evolved, including milk, childbirth, our voices, and even our brains (and the extent to which they are or are not different from male brains). She also picks out the aspects of our evolution that allowed us, despite all the odds, to reach the population size we have today.

Eve is part of a growing collection of work that aims to address the gender balance in our scientific understanding. Perhaps the most famous example is Caroline Criado-Perez’s Invisible Women, but there are a number of such books out there. What really stood out about this one, was how it not only acknowledged the existence of transgender people, but affirmed and included them in the author’s discussions. Bohannon is consistently clear on the difference between sex and gender, on how socialised behaviours are not the same as genetic differences, and on how to tell one from the other. She also uses research about trans people, as well as some anecdotal research, to further explore the complexities around the questions she raises. Intersex people are also included, which gives time and space to the whole spectrum of both biological sex and gender identity.

This is a really fantastic read, not just for women to find out more about the evolution behind their own bodies, but for us to gain a more full understanding of how we biologically function and thrive as a species. It’s an incredible book that I hope will find a home on many a bookshelf.

I received a free copy for an honest review.

Stylistically I found this quite hard going. There's a lot of opinion or theorising thrown in among the scientific fact, which is offputting.

I am not a big reader of Non- Fiction but this sounded interesting. I read this over a long time (my 'bathroom' book) but it was perfect for dipping in & out of! Following the evolution of the female of our species it dealt with so many fascinating facts as each 'Eve' of a particular time frame's story was told. Such a narrative could so easily have been dry & over technical. However the writing style is so readable & often humorous that it kept me engaged throughout. Reading this on a Kindle I did find the footnotes annoying, I couldn't really look them up at the time & at the end of a section I usually couldn't remember what they referred to. This apart, this was a book I thoroughly enjoyed, Thanks to Netgalley & the publisher for letting me read & review this thought provoking book.

This book led me to consider many interesting points about female evolutions, changes to our bodies, and reasons for why we feel and act the way we do. It was written in a way that is easy for the layman to understand, while still including enough detail to be thought-provoking.

It appears to be well researched, and the majority of the information was interesting. I did find myself less engaged with the parts where the author was theorising, however, it added an extra layer to my thoughts, seeing someone's thoughts on topics.

I loved the format - breaking each chapter down to a body part was a novel way to work through the many subjects.

Fascinating idea
Well researched and important for everyone to read
This is a fascinating book, addictive and really makes you think about your body and why things are as they are. If you like non-fiction that focuses on evolution, physiology, biology, anthropology and lots of other aspects then this is one for you. I thought it was very accessible as far as reading and understanding it went. Not too heavy on science.

It would be easy for a book like Cat Bohannon’s Eve: How The Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution to get all gender essentialist about things, and I was completely braced for it. I also wouldn’t have been surprised if the book just ignored the existence of trans people, since how we currently understand and perceive gender variance is often quite divorced from stuff that might be obviously related to evolution.

So I’m going to say up front that it doesn’t go in that direction, and Bohannon mentions trans people and trans bodies where relevant, often with the caveat that (unfortunately) we don’t have the same volumes of data to go on, and in some cases studies just haven’t been done. The book does focus on sex rather than gender, mostly (there’s some stuff about stereotype threat that’s more gendery), but transness is mentioned where appropriate.

It’s a chonky book, and there are a lot of footnotes, sometimes multiple per page; at times, that makes it a bit too dense and overwhelming. Each aside takes you away from the main point of the narrative, and ultimately I found it rather distracting, even where the footnotes were useful or interesting. Sometimes it kind of had the effect of a student trying to show you they know a lot about a topic by inserting an only slightly relevant footnote on the topic (I’ve never done that, I swear); sometimes it just felt like a digression.

Regardless, I really enjoyed it, even if the organisation felt a little overwhelming at times. It focuses on the ways evolution had to work on female bodies: pregnancy and lactation, the implications of pair-bonding for offspring, behaviours that needed to go with the physical changes, etc. It isn’t my exact area of interest, so it’s hard to evaluate some of the claims: evolution must’ve acted on male bodies too, but sometimes it seems like there’s not much left that can be about the males of the species, based on this! But it’s interesting, and Bohannon writes very clearly about a whole range of topics.

I really liked the first half of "Eve" and thought they were really interesting, but the later chapters rely more and more on conjecture and so far unproven theories. The last chapter especially seemed driven mostly by the author's personal opinions and world view instead of actual research.

The first chapters definitely seemed a lot more objective than the later ones.

Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution by Cat Bohannon
In Eve, Cat Bohannon places women at the center of history. Tracing our ancestors, she looks at different “Eves”, i.e. female representatives of their period, and argues how they were the actual driver of human evolution. She also questions today’s society and scientific standards: why is our medical care calibrated for men, meaning that women – half of the population – receive substandard medical care?
This was an absolute fantastic book and I regret that I did not pick it up sooner. I love how each chapter starts with the image of that time’s Eve and how it focuses on one specific aspect of evolution. I find Cat Bohannon’s writing insightful and although I might not agree with all her arguments, I do not think that that’s the point. The power of her book lies not in the answer she provides to such questions, but that she actually raises them, and at least attempts an answer. She herself acknowledges that research still has a long way to go, and that many of the things she writes are speculation instead of facts. However, to get this research going, somebody needs to start this debate, to make people aware of this, and to get us to think.
Eve is an absolutely brilliant book and I wholeheartedly recommend it to everyone! Do not be intimidated by its size, it is such a great book and I actually ended up reading it way faster than expected.
I read a digital advanced reader’s copy of this and want to thank Hutchinson Heinemann for my review copy! I’d also like to apologize for the delay at this point. When I saw this on Netgalley in July 2023 I knew I HAD to read this, and was over the moon when I got approved. Unfortunately, I then got very discouraged because I did not feel like I could commit to such a non-fiction chonker – and boy was I wrong. Let my experience be your lesson: don’t be afraid to pick this up, and go read it as soon as you can. You won’t regret it, it is THAT great a book!
I really hope it will make the shortlist tomorrow, and so far am also rooting for it to win the first ever Women’s Prize for fiction!

Well researched, provocative, poignant and even profound

Cat makes some persuasive arguments for how and why the female body has evolved from our earliest mammal through to the present day. There are some fascinating insights, sad revelations and many ‘a ha’ moments when something clicked and I felt that I understood our world more deeply.

It’s sad to think that in some ways as we’ve supposedly advanced that human society seems to have gone backwards. Cat makes no bones about her views on extremism and its terrible costs and legacy for the societies directly impacted and the wider world. Some of her views may be challenging to some readers but her case for the importance of education, ending child marriage and providing healthcare for every child rings out passionately. She also stresses that unless we deal with climate change what we know as modern human life will vanish. These are by no means small things to deliver but her book impresses the need for us to learn from history and create a fairer better world for all.

This thought-provoking book has given me much to ponder on.

I was given this book from the author via netgalley only for the pleasure of reading and leaving an honest review should I choose to.

It took me a while to get through this book and not because it wasn’t interesting, it certainly was but there was so much information contained within the chapters it needed a little digestion before moving on.
The book starts with looking at various “Eves” or evolutionary ancestors that have contributed to the gynaecology of modern humans. These sections are full of fascinating insights into the subtle differences between the sexes from tool use to hearing. The book seems to move from there to a more social and cultural view of the importance of women and this was where, while still interesting, it lost me from an evolutionary theme.
It it well worth a read but I’m just not sure from a purely scientific point of view what value it offers.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publishers for this ARC in exchange for an honest review.

This is a fascinating book. It's not a "read in one sitting" book but I found it easy to dip in and out.
It's very well written and not too complicated despite the subject. I think I'll buy this book as it'll be interesting for my daughter to read when she's a bit older.

📚 #NetGalley ARC review 📚

Title: Eve: How the Female Body Drove 200 Million Years of Human Evolution
Author: Cat Bohannon
Release date: 12/10/23

Thanks to NetGalley and Random House UK for the chance to read this ARC ahead of its release.

I must confess - and apologise - that this review is so incredibly late. I read, Eve back in September...but it's been a difficult year, of which that month was pretty much the peak. Writing anything was hard.

Here I am now though with a briefer review than I'd intended, to tell you that Eve is a fascinating journey through the millennia. I will confess that I found the earlier chapters (more biological, about the oldest history of the female body) more interesting than the later ones (which became more sociology-focused). Not to take anything away from the obvious dedication that the author put into her work though - I recognised that its importance - I suspect I just wasn't in the best headspace to absorb it at that time.

A future re-read, perhaps?

I very rarely read non-fiction, but this book intrigued me as soon as I received the email about it from NetGalley.
It isn’t a quick read by any means. I have dipped in and out of it over the last few months and I have found it fascinating.
I love the way it is written. It’s very easy to read even though it’s a complicated subject matter, full of scientific facts. The author makes it very reader friendly. I’d love to have a hardcover copy for my bookshelf.
If you’re even remotely interested in evolution, then I think you will appreciate this book. I learned a lot!

"... there's a quiet revolution in the science of womanhood brewing. In the last fifteen yeas, researchers in all sorts of fields have been discovering fascinating things about what it means to be a woman - to have evolved inn the was we have, with the body features we have - and how that could change the way we understand ourselves and our species as a whole. But the majority of scientists don't know about this revolution. And if scientists don't know about it - because their not reading outside their field, and their field is still permeated by the male norm - how is anyone else going to piece it together?"

And so Bohannon decided to research and write this book! She takes nine different "Eves" - like Mitochondrial Eve, progenitors of our species but going back way further into evolutionary history to ratty-squirrelly creatures with milk patches - and goes through how their development led to our physical, psychological and social development.

We know already from reading books like "Invisible Women" that women's bodies are too often left out of research on all sorts of things, from medicine to health and safety and sport. Bohannon takes the thesis that we should look at women's bodies, from milk to wombs to menopause, to see how and why human evolution happened.

Packed with fascinating and sometimes startling facts, this book is one to read slowly and savour; you'd be hard-pushed to remember everything in it but you'll know where to go when you need to check that fact and it's heavily referenced with chapter footnotes, notes to quotations and facts and a bibliography so you know you're on safe ground.

Just as an example, Bohannon posits that the rise of cities was down to the invention of wet-nursing: outsourcing breast-feeding to women who could nourish multiple babies at a time shortened the distance between the babies the mothers could produce, therefore creating enough population to sustain a city. Fascinating.

She covers all sorts of topics including a robust defence of the right of trans people to exist, at various turns from milk production to brains (did you know that both men and women can produce breast milk, and in some societies do as a matter of course when sharing child-rearing, so many but not all cis women adopting or trans women can have or be given pregnancy hormones and breastfeed their child, just as many but not all cis women can breastfeed after pregnancy? Me neither.

I won't share any more revelations but I do urge you to go and read this amazing book.

Reviewed today on my blog: https://librofulltime.wordpress.com/2023/12/24/book-review-cat-bohannon-eve/

This is the sort of book that would't have been published a few years ago, but luckily it's here now. And what a book it is. Not only telling the origin of the female body, but also how it that relates and creates the world around us. A book which would have been taboo, banned a few years back.

This book isn't a fluffy binge-able read. Its heavy and very academic, but neither is the subject. However, the author does have a conversational tone and beautiful imagery of the original Eves.
The chapters are well set out and offer readable size pieces that you can take in a digest. And that's how i read it, a body part a night because there's a lot to take in and learn.

Grab this book for an eye opening read that will shock and awe you.

"Eve" by Cat Bohannon offers a comprehensive and compelling re-examination of human evolution, emphasizing the significant role of the female body in shaping our species' evolutionary history and societies. Drawing upon disciplines such as evolutionary biology, physiology, palaeoanthropology, and genetics, Bohannon challenges the long-standing male-centric narrative of human development and brings attention to the contributions of the female body.

The book begins with a captivating tour of mammalian development, tracing back to the Jurassic era. By emphasizing the role of women, Bohannon provides an alternative narrative that sheds light on the often overlooked aspects of human evolution. Through this lens, she presents a new history of our species, one that highlights the evolutionary significance of the female body.

One of the primary goals of "Eve" is to challenge stereotypes and encourage readers to reconsider traditional narratives. Bohannon highlights the limitations of evolutionary reasoning that have perpetuated male-centric views. By doing so, she urges us to recognize the essential role of women in shaping our society and future.

Throughout the book, Bohannon explores various aspects of the female body that have influenced human evolution and continue to impact contemporary society. Pregnancy, breastfeeding, cognitive differences, menopause, and other biological factors are thoroughly examined, emphasising their significance in shaping our species. By delving into subjects such as midwifery, gynaecology, and prenatal care, Bohannon highlights the biological and social adaptations related to the female body that have contributed to our survival and flourishing as a species.

In her analysis, Bohannon also addresses the historical bias in scientific research, which has often prioritised male bodies and excluded female bodies from studies. This biased approach has resulted in an incomplete understanding of human evolution and health. By shedding light on this issue, Bohannon calls for a more inclusive and comprehensive approach to scientific research, highlighting the importance of considering both male and female bodies.

Bohannon's insightful analysis of the evolution of our culture emphasises the profound influence of traits such as problem-solving, collaboration, and storytelling. She suggests that the evolutionary forces and the role of the female body in shaping these traits have played a pivotal role in our shared human experience.

Through extensive research and engaging storytelling, Cat Bohannon challenges traditional beliefs and assumptions and encourages us to recognise and celebrate the strength and the essential role of women in our evolutionary history. "Eve" serves as a reminder that our shared history is a tapestry woven by the remarkable influence of women throughout time.