Anatomy of Love: A Natural History of Mating, Marriage, and Why We Stray [Paperback]

Helen Fisher (Author)

Book Description

Release date: January 3, 1994

"Captivates the reader, answers all those puzzling questions that caused your mother (or priest or guidance counselor or gym teacher) to blame God and/or hormones....Her prediction of a more open and egalitarian order provides a compelling--and hopeful--vision for the future."
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Love at first sight...the copulatory gaze...dinner dates...jealousy... intimacy... homesexuality...infidelity...Dr.Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History, explains it all in this four-million-year history of the human species. She demystifies much about romance and pairing that we tend to believe is willfull or just plain careless. She offers new explanations for why men and women fall in love, marry, and divorce, and discusses the future of sex in a way that will surprise you.

Editorial Reviews

From the Inside Flap

"Captivates the reader, answers all those puzzling questions that caused your mother (or priest or guidance counselor or gym teacher) to blame God and/or hormones....Her prediction of a more open and egalitarian order provides a compelling--and hopeful--vision for the future."
THE PHILADELPHIA INQUIRER
Love at first sight...the copulatory gaze...dinner dates...jealousy... intimacy... homesexuality...infidelity...Dr.Helen Fisher, an anthropologist at the American Museum of Natural History, explains it all in this four-million-year history of the human species. She demystifies much about romance and pairing that we tend to believe is willfull or just plain careless. She offers new explanations for why men and women fall in love, marry, and divorce, and discusses the future of sex in a way that will surprise you.

Product Details

• Paperback: 432 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books (January 3, 1994)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0449908976
• ISBN-13: 978-0449908976
• Product Dimensions: 0.9 x 5.7 x 8.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.6 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.2 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (31 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #66,166 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
  • #65 in Books > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Customs & Traditions

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

55 of 56 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating, accessible book April 10, 2000

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

I found this book completely engrossing. Her detailed explanations of human evolution and her logical, clearly thought out and well-supported hypothesis about early sexual behavior allowed me, as a reader, to develop a rather comprehensive picture of patterns in human sexuality. More than any other book I've read on the subject, this one seems to balance the 'biology is destiny' concept with the acknowledged influence of cultural factors. I highly recommend this book for anyone even remotely interested in evolution, human sexuality or a perspective on modern relationships.

60 of 67 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars Evolutionary stories about love, science and speculation February 15, 1997

By Todd I. Stark VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

Love was once a popular topic for scientists. It lost popularity for a while as a 'fuzzy' and perhaps even unknowable topic of study. Now we are again studying it, chemically, socially, psychologically, and also from the perspective of how it evolved. The evolution of mating behavior is the topic of "The Anatomy of Love." Evolutionary psychologists have come up with various stories about such things as why women might have orgasms, even though they don't seem to need them to reproduce. Can we ever really know what forces caused such behaviors to be selected ? Should women really accept unquestioningly, as evolutionary psychologists like Fisher propose, that their interest in sex is always secondary to their biological purpose to reproduce ? Thought provoking counter-arguments to some elements of this view are found in anthropologist Meredith Small's "What's Love Got to Do with It ?" Helen Fisher does an enviable, if sometimes tedious job laying out the evolutionary story of love, but is it the only story we can make from the evidence of modern human relationships ? Readers who apply these lessons to their own lives would do well to appreciate that human behavior has a flexibility that sometimes defies our interpretations of our own biology, and that those interpretations often change over time. Read this excellent account of how evolutionary psychologists believe love was selected through evolution, but keep in mind the limitations of our knowledge of what really happened early in our evolutionary history. Bone structure may leave fossillized evidence, but love and sex leave very few clues over the eons

20 of 21 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Finally, Love is Explained Clearly July 5, 1997

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

Through a careful analysis of a vast archive of anthropological and psychological research, Dr. Fisher constructs a cpmprehensive theory that explains why we love, how it happens, and why it (often) doesn't last. Her style and arguments are persuasive--I have had many occasions to refer back to this book since I read it; It is full of useful insights, particularly on the physiological nature of 'passion', that ecstatic feeling that makes lovers feel joyful or anguished. Written with outstanding clarity

19 of 22 people found the following review helpful

4.0 out of 5 stars 75% Science 25% Speculation **Caution** January 24, 2008

By #$%@ VINE™ VOICE

Format:Paperback

The book is full of interesting data. I fell in love with the book but sadly you have really read it. The author tries to express her ideas as scientific or historic facts. Here are a couple of examples of her writing.

I will maintain that monogamy, or pair bonding, is the hallmark of the human animal, there is no question that a minority of men and women follow other sexual scripts. Page 66

On the same page she states, Only 16% or 136 of 853 cultures that exist are monogamous. 84% of the cultures permit a man to take more than one wife at a time. In Africa 25% of all older men, have two or three wives at once.

On page 154 the author states her theory:

Like pair bonding in foxes, robins, and many other species that mate only through a breeding season, human pair bonds originally evolved to last only long enough to raise a single dependent child through infancy, the first four years, unless a second infant was conceived.

On the same page the author states the following;

How serial monogamy evolved can only be surmised. Our earliest ancestors probably lived in communities much like modern chimps. Everyone copulated with just about everybody else, except with mother and close siblings. Then gradual monogamy emerged. The lifestyle of olive baboons provides a fascinating model, however, for how pair bonding, the nuclear family, and divorce could have evolved in these primal hordes.

On Chapter 10 the author states
At times in history the Egyptians, Iranians, Romans, and other sanctioned brother-sister incest for special groups such as royalty. But with these curious exceptions, mother-son, father-daughter, and brother-sister mating have been forbidden; incest taboo is universal to humankind.... It is fair to assume that the human incest taboo had emerged among Cro-Magnon or long before-for several reasons. (This is an unsubstantiated opinion without any scientific base.)

But the best is in Chapter 15;

After the reformation marriage became a civil contract, rather than a sacrament, for Protestants. So beginning in the 1600s women in non-Catholic countries could obtain a divorce from civil authorities. In fact, divorce rates clearly fluctuated throughout the centuries following Christ's call for monogamy.
:
In here the author did make a statement, which is based on false premises. In the Bible there is not a single attributed statement to Christ about monogamy. What Christ said was that a man should never divorce a woman. Why? Up to that point in history the sole source of food, shelter, and protection of women was the man. In the Jewish society, and Christ was speaking to the Jews, woman was a non-entity without any rights to property or rights whatsoever. Therefore, a divorce was the equivalent of an assassination. In a divorce a woman was thrown outside the protection of the family and household and left to the elements of nature and for other men, and wild beasts to ravish her.

So after reading the book and taking 29 pages worth of notes in MS Word I can say that the book is a defense of monogamy and feminism in which the author had gone to extremes to try to justify her ideas. But after a thorough reading I can say that her research is great but it is a piece that has to be taken with great and extreme caution. If you do not have any real religious and scientific background you can end up beliving everything stated in the book.

Nevertheless the book is good one, but not for ignorant! I really like the book, but not her struggles trying to justify monogamy and her femenist ideals. You cannot change or alter reality to accommodate your beliefs, and that is what she did! Read more ›

12 of 13 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars An Honest Look at Love September 11, 2003

By Z. Holmboe

Format:Paperback

As I biologist, I am constantly frustrated by the unscientific (and often ultra-philisophical) interpretation that goes on when considering humanity, and particularly love. This book took the extreme interest that exists about human sexuality and love, and places them in a scientific light, without necissarily demonizing or undermining the amazing feelings that go along with love; Fisher simply explains the science behind these amazingly rich and powerful feelings in an attempt to better know ourselves.

40 of 50 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars High hopes not fulfilled May 3, 2004

By A Customer

Format:Paperback

To be fair, if I had read this book when it was first published in 1992, I would probably have given it a better review. One of the problems of this book is that it is now 2004, and this book is showing its age. To a certain degree, this is inevitable for a book that was on the cutting edge of a new and exciting field when it was published, but this is exacerbated by the highly speculative nature of the book. Fisher takes some basic ideas from the research of the time, and then uses them to indulge in speculation (in my opinion often wildly and excessively). Whole portions of the book (for example, the chapter on Neanderthals) have been rendered largely obsolete by more recent discoveries.

I was often concerned at the lack of supporting evidence that Fisher presented for many of her assertions. In fairness, I didn't read the end notes, but there were many times when I looked for a supporting reference and none was provided, leading me to question whether what I was reading was based on any sort of sound research.

Finally, I was also disappointed in the quality of the writing. On the whole, the prose lacked elegance, and there were a few times when the author's meaning became entirely unclear, due to ambiguous sentance construction. Contrdictory statements sometimes followed one after another.

I must say that, in spite of my criticism, I did appreciate some of Fisher's ideas, and the book has certainly helped to deepen my understanding of this topic. Unfortunately, I was left with the feeling that there must be someone else out there who would better provide this fascinating material with the presentation that it deserves.