Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation: The Definitive Guide to the Evolutionary Biology of Sex - Softcover

Olivia Judson

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0805063323 ISBN 13: 9780805063325

Publisher: Holt Rinehart and Winston, 2003

Synopsis

A sex guide for all living things and a hilarious natural history in the form of letters to and answers from the preeminent sexpert in all creation.

Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation is a unique guidebook to sex. It reveals, for example, when necrophilia is acceptable and who should commit bestiality with whom. It discloses the best time to have a sex change, how to have a virgin birth, and when to eat your lover. It also advises on more mundane matters -- such as male pregnancy and the joys of a detachable penis.

Entertaining, funny, and marvelously illuminating, the book comprises letters from all creatures worried about their bizarre sex lives to the wise Dr. Tatiana (a.k.a. Olivia Judson), the only sex columnist in creation with a prodigious knowledge of evolutionary biology. Fusing natural history with advice to the lovelorn, blending wit and rigor, she is able to reassure her anxious correspondents that although the acts they describe might sound appalling and unnatural, they are all perfectly normal -- so long as you are not a human. In the process, she explains the science behind it all, from Darwin's theory of sexual selection to why sexual reproduction exists at all. Applying human standards to the natural world, in the end she reveals the wonders of both.

"Delightful . . . Easy to understand and hard to resist, it's sex education at its prime -- accurate, comprehensive, and hilarious." -- Newsweek

About this title

Review:

"Captivating . . . An evolutionary biologist with interesting and amusing things to tell us." --The Wall Street Journal

"Funny and blissfully original . . . Dr. Tatiana's science is first-rate." --The Economist

"Erasmus Darwin titillated 18th century London with his poem 'The Loves of Plants.' He never new the half of it. Dr. Tatiana knows how the other half loves, and it's much kinkier than anybody imagined. Never has science seemed more like daytime television." --Matt Ridley, author of The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature

"Human? Lucky you! You rate a delightful romp through the weird, wild world of animal sex, with a guide who really knows the, um, ins and outs. Eavesdrop as Dr. T consoles her clients, from frustrated fruit flies to lovelorn golden pottos. You think you have problems? You could be a green spoon worm who's just inhaled her husband, or a peacock ashamed of his fifth-rate feathers. Count your blessings, primate. Then read, learn, enjoy." --Melvin J. Konner, author of The Tangled Wing: Biological Constraints on the Human Spirit

"Perhaps the most original advice manual ever written . . . Judson has pulled off the rarest coup: a science book that's actually fun to read." --The New Republic

"Whimsical, irreverent and illuminating . . . A most amusing and educative book on animal sex." --San Francisco Chronicle

"Judson's witty, well-researched vignettes are a guilty pleasure, natural history that goes down as sweet as a trashy tell-all." --Outside

"Wonderfully entertaining and authoritative . . . A stimulating feast of extraordinary sexual practices." --Nature

"More positions than the Kama Sutra-but don't try this at home!" --Steve Jones, author of The Language of Genes: Solving the Mysteries of Our Genetic Past, Present and Future

"Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation is a thoroughly engaging and exhaustively researched account of the numerous different kinds of sexual behavior that biologists have observed in the natural world. By human standards, much of this behavior is quite kinky (my favorite is the description of blow hole sex among Amazon River dolphins). However, as Olivia Judson explains, it is quite natural within its own context." --Richard Morris, author of The Evolutionists: The Struggle for Darwin's Soul

From the Publisher:

In witty question-and-answer format, this book is biology explained by entertaining reference to the evolution of "all creatures great and small" .

About this edition

• Publisher: Holt Rinehart and Winston
• Publication date: 2003
• ISBN 10: 0805063323
• ISBN 13: 9780805063325
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 320