Testosterone: An Unauthorized Biography

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· Tantor Media Inc · Narrated by Emily Durante
Audiobook
11 hr 19 min
Unabridged
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About this audiobook

Testosterone is a familiar villain, a ready explanation for innumerable social phenomena, from the stock market crash and the overrepresentation of men in prisons to male dominance in business and politics. It's a lot to pin on a simple molecule.



Yet your testosterone level doesn't in fact predict your competitive drive or tendency for violence, your appetite for risk or sex, or your strength or athletic prowess. It's neither the biological essence of manliness nor even "the male sex hormone." This unauthorized biography pries T, as it's known, loose from over a century of misconceptions that undermine science even as they make urban legends about this hormone seem scientific.



T's story didn't spring from nature: it is a tale that began long before the hormone was even isolated, when nineteenth-century scientists went looking for the chemical essence of masculinity. And so this molecule's outmoded, authorized life story persisted, providing a handy rationale for countless behaviors—from the boorish and the belligerent to the exemplary and enviable. Rebecca Jordan-Young and Katrina Karkazis focus on what T does in six domains: reproduction, aggression, risk-taking, power, sports, and parenting. At once arresting and deeply informed, Testosterone allows us to see the real T for the first time.
Testosterone is a familiar villain, a ready explanation for innumerable social phenomena, from the stock market crash and the overrepresentation of men in prisons to male dominance in business and politics. It's a lot to pin on a simple molecule. Yet your testosterone level doesn't in fact pre...

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About the author

Rebecca M. Jordan-Young is a sociomedical scientist whose research has been supported by grants from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities and others. Jordan-Young is professor of women's, gender, and sexuality studies at Barnard College and recipient of a Guggenheim Fellowship. Katrina Karkazis is a cultural anthropologist who spent fifteen years at the Stanford Center for Biomedical Ethics, working at the intersection of science, technology, gender studies, and bioethics. She is Carol Zicklin Endowed Chair in the Honors Academy at Brooklyn College, City University of New York. Emily Durante has been narrating audiobooks for over ten years and is also an AudioFile Earphones Award-winning audiobook director. She has been acting since the age of seven and has performed in a number of stage productions at the professional, collegiate, and regional levels.
Rebecca M. Jordan-Young is a sociomedical scientist whose research has been supported by grants from the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities and others. Jordan-Young is professor of women's, gender, and sexuality studies at Barnard College and recipient of a Guggenheim Fe...

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