Goodreads Description
I picked this up on the recommendation of Rebecca Schinsky from Book Riot. As a psychology major, she always seeks out smart nonfiction titles. Fisher originally published this in 1992, and while I had wanted to read that edition for some time, the online dating and texting environment of modern times has made many parts obsolete. In the prologue, Fisher admits that most of this book is new.
Quick note: Don't let the length of this text put you off. It's technically only 320 pages, with the last 130 pages devoted to Appendices, Notes, Bibliography, and a couple fun quizzes if you're interested. All par for the course when science is involved, man!
Fisher's prominence as a biological anthropologist allows her to give in-depth detail on the mating habits and courtship of early hominins millions of years ago, as well as comparisons to loving behaviors of wide-ranging species.The cultural experiences that affect romance- determining whom you love, where, and when- were quite fascinating, as well as the reasons that the Seven Year Itch phenomenon is biologically more like the 3-4 year itch. This book will give you a case of the "Did you knows?" One more neat (and kind of annoying fact)....did you know that going from traveling on all fours to bipedalism in the jungle made carrying infants more difficult, thus forcing females to become more reliant on men for food procurement while they "stayed home" with their young? Way to reduce an even hunting partnership! Walking on two feet instead of all fours had many benefits though, so I'm mostly okay with it...ha.
The informative ways in which she discusses humanity's evolution from four broad, basic styles of thinking (each associated with one of four brain systems: dopamine, serotonin, testosterone, and estrogen) provided explanation to all the "chemical" talk you hear thrown around concerning infatuation and love.
There is a lot of repetition, but that worked for me since science isn't my strong point, and hearing details multiple times helped the absorption of material. There were sections I found tedious and skimmed only briefly. While some of the info isn't surprising, I did find the positive outlook she has on the future of dating (with the prevalence of I-phones and dating apps) surprising. This made me breathe a bit easier as I have girls who will be navigating this territory in the upcoming years. I would recommend to anyone who has a strong interest in this subject, but might pick up a more anecdotal book if not.
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