Editorial Review:Product Description:This is a book about the making an unmaking of sex over the centuries. It tells the astonishing story of sex in West from the ancients to the moderns in a precise account of the history of reproductive anatomy and physiology.
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Related Items:
see more
Related Items:
Customer Reviews
Average Rating:
-
Do not buy this book
This book is covered with many glowing reviews. What none of them mention is that the author cannot write an intelligible sentence. Sometime in the 80's, perhaps due to the influence of that patent charlatan Derrida, it became fashionable to write lengthy, tortuous sentences using strings of polysyllabic undefined non-words. This book is firmly in that tradition. There may actually be valuable content here, but it's impossible to get at without subjecting yourself to a hideous reading experience. The author, like others in this prose tradition, seems unaware that his style invalidates his content. If he can't be bothered to write a clear sentence, why should we assume that his thoughts are clear? This book is a great opportunity wasted.
Rating: 
-
A Good Read If You Don't Know Medical History
Joan Cadden's much more important and accurate book, _The Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages_, opens by taking Laqueur's premise to task. And she's right to do so -- someone had to.
The problem is that Laqueur simplifies. He attempts to argue, based on little understanding of the complexity of medical models used either in antiquity or in the Middle Ages, that a one-sex model predominated in medicine. And while, to a degree, he's right, he's equally wrong. He would be correct if Aristotle's model of the human body were the ONLY one used either in antiquity or the Latin west. But Aristotle pointedly presented his model of gender in opposition to that proposed by the Hippocratics. Galen, who obviously knew both Aristotle and Hippocrates, then modified the idea of what constitutes sexual differentiation even further. After Galen, we have centuries of commentary and modification by Arabic scholars -- Avicenna predominates -- before we get to the Latin translations which spurred scholastic debate in the universities of the west. Their model of the body was not simple or limited, it didn't rely solely on authoritative sources from the past, and it never solidified into a unified theory. To argue that it did would rob these individuals of their collective rationality and treat them like amusing children -- something a historian should avoid whenever possible.
In order to create a readable and comprehensible text, Laqueur elided the complexities of the arguments common in the medieval universities regarding sex difference and reproduction in order to present his readers with a neat and tidy package. Whenever presented with a neat package in history, doubt the source.
Cadden's work is a direct refutation of Laqueur's. In it, she attempts to detail the confusing and complex model of sexual differentiation inherited by the Latin west from antiquity, including Galen's two-seed model and all the implications thereof. She furthermore attempts to demonstrate the application of these theories of gender and sex. She grounds her arguments much more firmly in the context of the time than Laqueur ever managed to do.
If you really want to understand pre-modern concepts of the body, set Laqueur aside and pick up Cadden instead. While Laqueur's model is a nicely simplified version of the past, the question has to arise -- when does simplification become distortion? How much detail about the past can be safely ignored in the name of simplicity before you create a useless model? But for those who only want a cursory investigation into the history of the body through a primarily medical lens, by all means read the Laqueur. He's far easier to read than Cadden. He's just not as reputable.
Rating: 
-
Fascinating
This book is absolutely fascinating. I recently wrote a paper on gender anatomy in the 18th and 19th century, and this book was my main resource. Laqueur has a clear and well written style as he describes the different theories on gender and sex throughout the ages and the rammifications of these theories in terms of culture and interpersonal relationships.
Rating: -
Foucault 101
An excellent book laying and discussing the basics of gender creation in western culture. This book borrows heavily from "The History of Sexuality" by Michel Foucault. This book very explictly forms a general hypothesis of gender and doesn't fail to back it up with extreme detail, sometimes "ad nauseum". Overall a good read, though dense.