An Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal Winner
A Progressive Book of the Year
A TechCrunch Favorite Read of the Year
โDeeply researched and thoughtful.โ
โNature
โAn extended exercise in myth busting.โ
โOutside
โA critique of both popular and scientific understandings of the hormone, and how they have been used to explain, or even defend, inequalities of power.โ
โThe Observer
Testosterone is a familiar villain, a ready culprit for everything from stock market crashes to the overrepresentation of men in prisons. But your testosterone level doesnโt actually predict your appetite for risk, sex drive, or athletic prowess. It isnโt the biological essence of manlinessโin fact, it isnโt even a male sex hormone. So what is it, and how did we come to endow it with such superhuman powers?
Tโs story begins when scientists first went looking for the chemical essence of masculinity. Over time, it provided a handy rationale for countless behaviorsโfrom the boorish to the enviable. Testosterone focuses on what T does in six domains: reproduction, aggression, risk-taking, power, sports, and parenting, addressing heated debates like whether high-testosterone athletes have a natural advantage as well as disagreements over what it means to be a man or woman.
โThis subtle, important book forces rethinking not just about one particular hormone but about the way the scientific process is embedded in social context.โ
โRobert M. Sapolsky, author of Behave
โA beautifully written and important book. The authors present strong and persuasive arguments that demythologize and defetishize T as a molecule containing quasi-magical properties, or as exclusively related to masculinity and males.โ
โLos Angeles Review of Books
โProvides fruitful ground for understanding what it means to be human, not as isolated physical bodies but as dynamic social beings.โ
โScience
An Independent Publisher Book Awards Gold Medal Winner
A Progressive Book of the Year
A TechCrunch Favorite Read of the Year
โDeeply researched and thoughtful.โ
โNature
โAn extended exercise in myth busting.โ
โOutside
โA critique of both popular and scientific understandings of the hormone, an...