Ask a Bookseller: ‘Bitch: On the Female of the Species’ by Lucy Cooke

On The Thread’s Ask a Bookseller series, we talk to independent booksellers all over the country to find out what books they’re most excited about right now. Eye-catching title, isn't it? Zoologist Lucy Cooke takes a close look at the often-overlooked female half of the animal kingdom and the active role they take within evolutionary biology. This recommendation comes from Carolyn Chin of Books on First in Dixon, Ill., who she says she found the nonfiction book “totally fascinating.” There’s a tendency to focus on alpha males in evolutionary biology: on their showy, sometimes violent displays of dominance and their pursuit of multiple mates. The females are often portrayed as docile prizes, passive bearers of offspring or devoted (or not) mothers. Some of this understanding traces back, not to science, but to the gender ideas of Charles Darwin's time. Cooke paints a picture that is far more interesting and active, exploring female topi antelopes who battle for the best males, meerkat mothers who murder competitors’ young, female lizards who reproduce without a male’s help and some species whose description defies binary. Chin praises the writing as highly readable and often humorous, with such clever chapter titles as “50 Ways to Eat Your Lover.”