Adam's Curse: A Future without Men
by Bryan Sykes
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Book Summary Information
Author: Bryan SykesEdition: Paperback
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2005-05-17
ISBN: 0393326802
Number of pages: 320
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Summary of Adam's Curse: A Future without Men
The inside story of the Y chromosome's fatal flaw, as told by one of the world's leading geneticists.
By the nationally best-selling author of The Seven Daughters of Eve, Adam's Curse investigates the ultimate evolutionary crisis: a man-free future. How is it possible that the Y chromosome, which separated the sexes and allowed humans to rise to the apex of the animal kingdom, also threatens to destroy sexual reproduction altogether? Bryan Sykes confronts recent advances in evolutionary theory to find the answers to the questions that inexorably follow: Is there a genetic cause for men's greed, aggression, and promiscuity? Could a male homosexual gene possibly exist? A must read for anyone interested in popular science, family genealogy, and today's infertility crisis, Adam's Curse provokes a shocking debate on the nature of sexual reproduction. 6 illustrationsBryan Sykes follows up The Seven Daughters of Eve with the equally challenging and well-written Adam's Curse. This time, instead of following humanity's heritage back to the first women, Sykes looks forward to a possible future without men. The seeds of the book's topics were sown when Sykes met a pre-eminent pharmaceutical company chairman who shared his surname. Using the Y chromosome, which is passed nearly unchanged from father to son, the author found that he shared a distant ancestor with the other Sykes. Along the way, he discovered that the Y chromosome was worth examining more closely. The first third of Adam's Curse is devoted to a clear and comprehensive lesson about genetics, the second narrates several fascinating stories of tracing ancestry via the Y chromosome, and the last chapters explore the history of male humanity and its future. Some readers will eagerly skim until they reach Chapter 21, where Sykes gets to the heart of the matter--why and how the Y chromosome has created a world where men overwhelmingly own the wealth and power, commit the crimes, and fight the wars. He uses the structural puniness of the Y chromosome to demonstrate that men are as unnecessary biologically as they are dominant socially. Sykes' provocative and quite personal book is likely to be unpopular among science readers who prefer their biology divorced from sociology, but his points taken in context will be difficult to refute. --Therese Littleton
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