Customer Reviews

Sperm Competition in Humans: Classic and Contemporary Readings

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This book is probably ten years ahead of its time. That is, in ten years or so, it will be commonplace for evolutionary psychologists and evolutionary biologists to apply sperm competition theory to humans. Shackelford and Pound, however, have already recognized the utility of applying sperm competition theory to humans, and they complied the first volume of this developing literature. There's an original chapter that provides an up to date overview of the field, and the remaining chapters are labeled as "classic and contemporary readings". They're also fascinating and balanced. It's really nice to have all of this work in one place.

This book contains previously published papers about sperm competition in human beings...a substantial number by Baker and Bellis, aswell as some more recent contributions by other authors. Despite the inclusion of more contemporary papers, by evolutionary psychologists in particular, the book does not present a coherent or sufficiently critical overview of the field. It is quite short, and very expensive.It would have been better, perhaps, to have written a book about this topic , in order to produce a much-needed synthesis.