Customer Reviews

Y Descent of Men: The Descent of Men

5 star:		(1)
4 star:		(5)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(5)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

An episode in Star Trek - The Next Generation portrays the Enterprise crew encountering a planet populated entirely by androgynes. The cast representing these creatures is clearly composed of only women. As clones, their appearance and outlook is nearly uniform and gender becomes a social ill. If Steve Jones is correct, this condition is the future of the human species. In this book Jones gives a full account of the rise and descent of masculinity, from the formation of the Y [male] chromosome to the current decline in sperm count in human society. As Jones makes clear, we all start in the womb as neuters, but various processes dictated by the father's chromosomes, turn some of us into males.

Jones opens his account with a touch of irony - it was a woman, Nettie Stevens, who identified the male chromosome in 1905. It took nearly a century to perceive the gene controlling sex determination - the SRY [sex recognition gene]. From there Jones explains the role of that short, 20 gene DNA string and its impact. Embryo development relies on sperm-borne chemicals. This input is part of the reason maleness drives the pace of evolution. Sperm is an invader, and the body resists invaders. The chemical changes reflect that fundamental dichotomy and there's nothing universal about male sperm. Its variety reflects the rapid evolutionary pathways taken by various organisms. And few species have evolved as rapidly as humans, Jones reminds us.

That haste, however, has led to vulnerability. Male lines, particularly in our own species, die out quicker. Jones' example is expressed in the recognition that all the family lineages since William the Conquerer had died out. Nor are his examples confined to humans. Hermaphroditic slugs in the French Pyranees are exhibiting an increase in female-only lines. Given his evidence for this happening in modern men, one can only wonder at the cause of this unisex phenomenon.

For it's modern men that are the target of this book. Whatever forces in evolution have reduced the size and impact of the Y chromosome, modern civilization has exacerbated its decline. Clinics in various nations record reduced sperm counts, notably in Italian taxi drivers, American businessmen, Scots shopkeepers. Jones isn't applauding these trends as some proto-feminist. He wants, through this book, for males to become aware of the fate their descendents will confront. Maleness is likely to disappear, and offers pointers to prevent that extinction. More focus, he stresses, needs to be made on the impact of various foodstuffs and industrial chemicals.

Depressing as much of this sounds, there is much to be learned from this book. Jones' ability to impart good science in a readable style makes this book an ideal acquisition. While facts galore are presented here, pedantic stumbling blocks are not. He has no more axe to grind than the desire to increase our awareness of ourselves, both male and female. As he notes, understanding of the operations of sexual mechanisms is still in its infancy. This book will stand for some time until more of our body's hidden secrets are revealed. For we men, let us hope it's not too late. The recent announcement of the mapping of the Y chromosome renders Jones' forecast obsolete, but most of his data remains valid. [stephen a. haines - Ottawa, Canada]

With its deliberate echo of the title of Charles Darwin's book The Descent of Man (in which "man" means humanity), Y: the Descent of Men is a study of the biology of men (as opposed to women) and maleness. Y is the Y chromosome, which contains the very small proportion of genetic information that men have and women do not. There is much interesting information, but the lack of structure -- a long series of facts stated one after another with very little to link them together -- makes it difficult to read more than a few pages at a time. Likewise the nudging and doubles entendres rapidly become tedious: for example, when we are told that "man's most basic attribute also has a strong tendency to wilt" we are clearly expected to think of erectile dysfunction, though the context tells us that the sentence refers to the tendency of the Y chromosome to lose genes progressively in the course of evolutionary time.

In the Preface Steve Jones tells that he does not plan to compete with other people with the same name -- the lead guitarist of the Sex Pistols, for example, or the champion golfer, etc. -- but will stick to what he knows, the biology and evolution of males. In genetics his expertise cannot be questioned, but there is more to biology than genetics, and the biochemistry in the book is journalistic in style, with starry-eyed references to "special enzymes" that make oestrogen, nitric oxide, and so on, or "special sequences" of DNA that with affinity for particular proteins. The objection here is to the word "special", which adds nothing because the great majority of enzymes are highly specific (the exceptions are mostly involved in digestion and detoxification, and even these are much more specific than the sort of catalysts used by chemists), and many sequences of DNA are likewise specific: in a world where everyone is exceptional, no one is exceptional.

The editing is often careless, as for example in the passage where we are told (apparently) that Pierre de Coubertin, the founder of the modern Olympic Games, forbade athletes' wives from watching the events, with violations punished by being thrown over a cliff. This is clearly not what Jones meant to say, but only because we know that it is absurd can we deduce what he did mean to say. Or what are we to make of the following pair of sentences: "The lowest [sperm] counts were in Copenhagen, followed in turn by Paris, Edinburgh and Turku (which came a clear top). The citizens of Edinburgh should be proud of their cells' ability to swim, which takes the European gold medal"? Does the author think that Turku is not in Europe? (No, as he told us at the beginning of the paragraph that it was a European city). Is he making a distinction between sperm count and swimming ability? (Hard to believe, as this is the first mention of swimming ability in this context). Why would it be a matter of pride, anyway?

More seriously, the whole book encourages a confusion between maleness and possession of a Y chromosome, even though the author is perfectly well aware (and explains in the first chapter) that the system for sex determination used by most mammals is only one of several that exist in nature. The Y chromosome is slowly losing genes, and may conceivably retain none at all after some more millions of years of evolution, but so what? There is no necessary implication that the male sex will disappear and that humans will adopt parthenogenesis.

Jones has an interesting approach - contrasting the weakness of the y chromosome with the outward behavior of men, but the book basically boils down to a series of anecodotes. They're all interesting, but it isn't cohesive enough to rank among the best popular science writing.

The author may have an interesting message somewhere, but who could find it? The writing is convoluted, the author is wallowing in his self-loathing, and with no apparent goal in mind. I don't care if the author hates the fact that he's a man. I want to read about genetics, dang it!

I find the topic fascinating, but I couldn't get through more than the first two or three chapters... I don't even remember how far I got, because it all just swam together (on the page, not just in my mind).

I was hoping to find another book to complement The X in Sex, but this book just makes me ask "Y?" -- as in "Y should I read this rubbish?" Thank heavens for libraries.

This is a fascinating look at male genetics and biology and makes for enlightening reading. I think it may be of more interest to males due to the very gender specific content, but saying that women may well find it an interesting read for an insight into the male condition. I agree with an earlier review where it says this is a touch long winded and I have to say that after the superb 'Language of the Genes' by the same author, I've felt disappointed by every thing I've read of his since. This has plenty to say, but it could have been said so much better (hence the four stars). Overall, a good read about those of us with that 'y' chromosome and worth sticking with for some interesting facts.

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The first three chapters of this book stay more or less on the theme implied by the title, focusing on genetics, reproduction and the effects of hormones. The author's concluding chapter, which states that "We are in the midst of an ascent of women matched by an equivalent descent of men," is thought-provoking if not completely convincing. Unfortunately, Jones devotes most of his other chapters to more titillating subjects such as sexual behavior, erectile dysfunction, circumcision, sperm counts, paternity tests, and surrogate parenthood. The author's overall theme that men are the second sex would have been more persuasive if he had stayed with the science, which he knows how to explain.

The subject is the biology of maleness and sexual reproduction. The style is that of a literary essay, not that of a typical popular-science book. Each chapter has its own topic and unity but, because of the author's style, the discussion seems to wander and be sketchy. A list of sources for each chapter points towards the depth of research that informs the discussion.

I feel puzzled to see that this book has invoked sharp hostilities among some (mainly US) readers, ascribing "Feminist propaganda at its finest" or "Written by Chicken Little?"
I don't believe Dr Jones "deserves" such fanatical labeling. What he is talking about is how a mollusk biologist views the human (or mammal in general) reproduction mechanism, and nothing more, nothing less.
IMHO, the book is simply interesting and fun as a bedtinme reading (like his other books.)
Or is it that the authour's British writing style never catches on in the US?

This book would have been convincing if it had relied on hard facts
and better research of human evolution. However like many before him Mr. Jones deviates from rational argument and shows his prejudice in this work which relies solely on a sometimes poorly interpreted meaning of what we have learnt about the human DNA.

One area in which Jones argument displays a clear lack of knowledge ( for a suppposed scientific writer of repute). Is in his paragraph about the reproductive system of men vs women. Here Jones states that men have an inefficient system due to the millions of sperm men produce vs the comparatively small amount of offspring that is resulted. What Mr Jones doesn"t realise is that not all sperm are designed to impregnate, as research has proven that the majority of sperm are in fact soldier sperm designed to seek out a rival males sperm present in a woman and prevent it from fertilizing her egg, much like a game of american football. Thus is the competeive nature of humans (by nature the strongest do indeed survive).

There is nothing inefficient about this ...in fact men continue to produce large amounts of sperm well into their 70s and onwards and can continue a very healthy reproductive life well into a very ripe old age. Women in comparison have a very limited (finite)supply of eggs and their reproductive usefulness is relatively speaking short lived.

Jones also goes on about how the Y chromosome is smaller and full of foreign material, plagued by impurities compared to the X chromosome.This may be true
due to a single chromosome not being able to recombine, however, maleness as its been termed in the Y chromosome isnt solely determined by the Y chromosome. X and Y = male, therefore the X chromosome is also part male( being the primary chromosome shared in all humans) and the Y merely acts as a powerful switch to activate what is carried and useful solely for the male species. The Y chromosome has reduced in size the author claims due to its degeneration. Well this may be partly true, however the Y chromosome has become efficient because it doesn't need to carry or duplicate the genetic information already present in the X thus it carries only that which is needed to activate maleness from the X this can account for the size reduction.

If two xx chromosomes are present and even a hint of Y is imprinted on an X then the result will be a male. It is a small and sometimes slightly more vulnrable chromosome in some ways but it is a dominant gene in that when presnt the result will always be male no matter how many X chromosomes there are. Thus thius is scientifiuc proof on how powerful the Y chromosome really is.

We also know from research that the X chromosome has just as many impurities and in fact the better portion of X chromosome data that was gathered and could be used to effectively decode it came from men, can we generalise and claim that the X chromosomes that are passed onto men are of better quality?
The only great thing about the X is not the X chromosome itself but in the fact that since 2 Xs are present in a female it can recombine and negate the defective gene thereby reducing the odds of flaws being passed on to female offspring, but it's far from perfect.

We do know that in the beginning of the DNA decoding project that the many samples of Y chromosomes were taken from a poor selection of male candidates, in fact to complete the sequence very good samples were supplied from Mediteranean and asian countries, what hasnt been explained is why the male DNA of mediterranean and in some cases asia are of better quality than the Y chromosomes from Britain or some parts of the U.S.A?

Could this be a sign that men in The USA and Britain have suffered far more DNA damage? and is this due to drugs and environmental pollutants?

My point being that the book is full of generalisations and suppositions resulting in the authors conclusions that really when examined fall very short of being conclusively convincing.

Are we still in an age where one sex must be superior? We know the sexes are equal(on the whole) but in different ways each has an advantage over the other. To state that one is the first sex and the other the second is a pretty backward form of thinking. And scientific research has no definite verdict on this, even today although we can hear all kinds of argument.

Men and women Xy or XX chromosomed peoples have equal imperfections -that is the only fact gathered from DNA research.

Both have very clear strengths and weaknesses...

Unfortunately this book doesn't stick to fact, and refuses to balance the argument.

At one point Mr. Jones makes reference to mens genital size and supports his argument by stating that it is reported from a Japanese brothel that the average size is around 5.5 inches?

I live in japan and I've never heard of a brothel here measure or keeping stas on anyone, Japanese are very discreet, also how accurate can a brothel in japan be? Is this a method of good science? Actually on Japanese TV they claimed that the average size here was a mere 5 inches, thats way smaller than that of people of European or African descent. But what's Jones point anyway apart from trying to cash in on a bit of man bashing?

This book is a disappointing read overall, it's too general, makes some very wild assumptions and really leaves out so much data that shows that the Y chromosome is in fact quite an efficient and important chromosome in the evolution of mankind.Men share both X and Y drawing on two forms of chromosomes , women only have a pair of the same chromosome. Draw your own conclusions as to what that means, but it's definitely no handicap.In fact in many ways there are clear advantages of the male Y chromosome over the X which the Author refuses to even acknowledge or explore in this publication.

Beards and baldness and belching are Nature's ways of saying "Youre manly." The Y chromosome has only 20 genes on it, but theyre important genes that code for things like fornicating, flirting, fighting, feeding, football, farting, etc. Everything a real guy needs in life, in a small wallet-size package.

Y:The Descent of Man is a general survey of facts, lore, and mythology about males. Jones segregates the information into distinct chapters about topics like baldness, erections, length, fidelity, aggression, development, etc. I learned a lot.

The book is well-written, and easy to read and digest.

I suspect the other reviewers are girls or girly-men.