The red queen: Sex and the evolution of human nature - Matt Ridley

Dandelions don’t do it; topminnows don’t do it; and the tiny fresh-water creature called a bdelloid rotifer definitely doesn’t do it, since there are no males in the species. But human beings come in two sexes, which mate in spite of all the trouble that goes along with it. This fascinating, delightfully literate work of evolutionary theory explains why.

Citing Lewis Carroll’s Red Queen from Through the Looking Glass, who has to keep running to stay in the same place, Matt Ridley demonstrates why sex is humanity’s best strategy for outwitting its constantly mutating internal predators. In the process, The Red Queen answers dozens of other riddles of human nature and culture—including why men propose marriage, the method behind our maddening notions of beauty, and the disquieting fact that a woman is more likely to conceive a child by an adulterous lover than by her husband. The result is a brilliantly written book that compels us to rethink everything from the persistence of sexism to the endurance of romantic love.