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Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World | 
 enlarge | Authors: Malcolm Potts, Thomas Hayden
Publisher: Benbella Books
Category: Book
List Price: $24.95
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Rating:  5 reviews
Sales Rank: 116587
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 457
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.5
Dimensions (in): 9.1 x 6.2 x 1.5
ISBN: 1933771577
Dewey Decimal Number: 303.60905
EAN: 9781933771571
ASIN: 1933771577
Publication Date: December 1, 2008
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Product Description
Human beings have been battling one another since time immemorial. But why war and terrorism? Why are men almost always the killers, and why are war and sex so inextricably linked? Why do we kill members of our own species intentionally, when few other animals do so? Sex and War traces the cultural and biological evolution of warfare from its prehuman origins through to our own times. In the spirit of Guns, Germs, and Steel, Potts and Hayden pull together insights from history, archaeology, psychology and biology to produce a clarifying new understanding of human history and current events. Combining exhaustive research and rich personal experience, Sex and War shows that war, terrorism, slavery, and the subjugation of women have common roots deep in our biological history. Evolution is not destiny, however, and the authors, with the crucial contributions of Martha Campbell, show how relatively simple strategies can help the biology of peace win out over the biology of war. In doing so, they lay out a rational roadmap to make war less likely in the future, and less brutal when it does occur.
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Sex and War Offers Sage Advice For Planetary Survival December 28, 2008
Donald A. Collins (Washington, DC, USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
From: Donald A. Collins
Book Review: Sex and War: How Biology Explains Warfare and Terrorism and Offers a Path to a Safer World" by Malcolm Potts and Thomas Hayden (Benbella Books,
Dallas, TX 2008)
TEXT: With endorsements high profile people such as Jane Goodall, founder of the Jane Goodall Institute and world's leading expert on our nearest to human primate, the chimpanzee, one can fully expect to find this book scientifically credible. It is a highly readable must read.
Sex and War will no doubt excite attention from all among the human species who still can read and think. Since that is quite a small minority, my fear is that its urgent and insightful theme will enjoy even among that sliver only an Andy Warholian 15 minutes of fame. Better not!
You may not be surprised to be told that the authors show with solid empirical proof that it is primarily male humans who bring us war, but perhaps you are unaware or unmindful of the driving force of male war making tendencies since the dawn of human history, the sex drive.
British born and Cambridge educated, Dr. Potts, now Bixby Professor at UC Berkeley, an obstetrician and research biologist has pursued his humanitarian work worldwide, including helping women in Bangladesh after the War of Liberation in 1972, then in countless other climes torn by conflicts. I met Malcolm in the 1960's when he was the first Medical Director of International Planned Parenthood Federation in London and since have served on several boards and done many travels with him. His co-author, Hayden, a freelance journalist, who is no relation to the Vietnam War Berkeley firebrand, Tom Hayden, also co-authored a 2007 book "On Call in Hell: A Doctor's Iraq War Story" with Cdr Rick Jadick, whose experience in ministering to wounded there brought high accolades from readers.
Rather ironically Hayden's book truly may have helped spark his participation in Sex and War, for while tales of heroism and selfless bravery in battle are the historical standards for all such stories, "Sex and War" reminds us of our biological evolution. After all, for much of human history the most successful and dominant males went to war, took the spoils and raped women in asserting that dominance. You know, Genghis Khan, etc.
One can see why Goodall could be so enthusiastic about this book, since Sex and War shows how close to chimpanzee behavior humans are. Bands of young males raid rival territories, finding the fittest females in classic Darwinian behavior, and thus benefitting the next generations.
The step up description from chimps to humans allows the authors to cite similar behavior found in tribal wars, among inner city street gangs, and then in full warfare, whose aftermath Potts personally helped deal with in Bangladesh when helping war-raped women. Terrorists in our day obviously are imbued with stories of heroic male behavior, which is more powerful than the reported financial inducements. A comparatively benign manifestation of aggressive male behavior can be observed at NFL football games both on the field and in the stands.
Potts' understanding of the urgency of dealing with our now overpopulated planet leads to explanations of how that crowding leads to wars, again entered into often with enthusiasm by young males, motivated by patriotism, excitement over battle, or even escape from dull underemployment or unemployment. The authors then most logically point to one way of cutting terrorism and the risk of wars (of which we now see so many going on around the world) and "a path to a safer world" among nations we now can see are "failed" or getting close to failing is by lowering birth rates through planned parenting, birth control, and, yes, abortion. The authors clearly show that rarely in history have women been combatants.
Understand that Potts' wife, Martha Campbell, who co-authored significant chapters, like her husband brings extensive scholarship and worldwide travel to bear on illuminating a modern woman's view. While such views remain still far from full acceptance in many cultures, including our own, the book's strong recommendation for more women's education as a major contributor to better family planning availability and fewer unplanned pregnancies surely is de rigueur among anyone doing strategic thinking about solving our pressing global problems.
The deep biological nature of human evolution will not be altered easily. The world remains dominated by male leaders who all too often feel so bloody good about solutions than seem to require bloodletting. One could point to our Iraq invasion and countless prior sorties into battle which could have been avoided by less testosterone dominated negotiations.
Perhaps as the number of nations armed with nuclear weapons grows, as it surely will, major powers may be more globally fixated on planetary survival by means proposed by the authors. But then again, perhaps not. And of course people who purport to bring us absolute security have in history often lead us to absolute tyranny.
Potts had co-authored with world renowned anthropologist, Roger Short, a ground breaking earlier book, "Ever since Adam and Eve: The Evolution of Human Sexuality' in 1999 which I reviewed for Amazon, writing "that the main evolutionary drive for humans and mammals generally has been and is SEX, for the key to our existence is the need to produce the BEST next generation. For many this book will prove an epiphany of understanding, a creation of more reverence for life, but one not based on the mythology of religion, but on the clear facts of science." Now in the nuclear age, where planetary destruction looms in multiple forms both nuclear and environmental we best find a new modus vivendi one which will provide a workable form of making love, but without war.
About the author: Collins is a free lance writer living in Washington, DC. His views are his own.
A must read December 27, 2008
Dr. Jerry Haigh (Saskatoon, SK, Canada)
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
In my opinion Malcolm Potts & Tom Hayden's Sex and War is a must read. The authors have impeccable credentials as authors of this text, Potts as a physician who has worked in many troubles areas of the world and led the drive to give women freedom of reproductive choice many years ago, Hayden as an award winning science writer. The racy title does not fully show the content, which is a very serious look at the whole story of men (not women) and war. Of course women are mentioned at length (almost always as victims), but it is we men that create the problems, and the authors constantly refer back to chimpanzee aggression. This is a serious & disturbing book, but Potts & Hayden do offer glimmers of hope & solutions to prevent the slide into anarchy that we may be facing. The book opens with a chapter on the horrible aftermath of the Bangladesh secession, in which Potts was involved as a physician. He tells us that it may have been the greatest case of mass rape in history. Many other horror stories about war, its combatants and its victims are used to show very clearly how Homo sapiens is destroying its own species and with it, the planet we inhabit. They offer glimpses of hope and solution, but caution that such hope is ephemeral.
A finger wagging guys will like and women will quote December 7, 2008
Thomas W. Sulcer (Summit, NJ USA)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
Sex and War is an insightful look at male humans behaving badly in sex and war, particularly fun to read if you're a guy into history and war and sex. But I wouldn't characterize this book as groundbreaking, but rather as a helpful reminder of our evolutionary ancestry and an intelligent rehashing of some fairly widely accepted ideas. At times it overreaches, claiming to offer a solution to the problem of terrorism, and while it provides some helpful thinking as well as possibly helpful foreign policy suggestions, this book does not offer a "path to a safer world" as the subtitle promises.
The authors build from a model of chimp aggression, showing how bands of young male chimpanzees raid rivals' territories, and how this is beneficial biologically. They build on a Darwinian model of survival of the fittest -- successful gangs get to promulgate their seed whether by raping conquered women or surviving to inseminate women from their own tribe. The authors extrapolate from chimp to human behavior, to tribal war, to street gangs, to large-scale warfare with underreported systemic raping, to suicidal terrorists. What's fun is watching the authors try to maintain a neutral academic tone when describing battles and raids and other guy stuff, but their affection for this stuff keeps bursting through. This is a masculine book, but with a pro-feminine agenda? The authors notice over-population is often a factor in war, particularly when there are surplus numbers of young, unemployed males. This leads them later to suggest that helping unstable nations lower their birth rates through planned parenting, birth control, and abortion would have a long term positive effect in reducing the risk of war and terrorism. They have a point.
And the authors have a good handle on why men go to war, why they're willing to risk death on distant battlefields, how courage glues them to defend their buddies, how it becomes permissible to kill enemies of an "out-group" because they've been reduced cognitively to nameless targets. And the authors correctly point out that rarely in history have women been combatants, and shows the sexual links here. My sense is these ideas are generally correct but not ground-breaking.
The middle section is more scattered, without a central focus but it allow the authors to show off their extensive knowledge of how sex and biology and war interrelate with government, religion, crime, technology, slavery, disease and so forth. And here the authors' world-wise expertise and wide-ranging knowledge shows to good effect. The book meanders into their thinking of how to avoid war and prevent terrorism, which offers some worthy points but which tend to be somewhat left-leaning, feminist-oriented, somewhat naive. For example, in a sidebar entitled "How to make peace break out", the authors recommend more education for women, increasing feminine representation in legislatures, encouraging birth control & abortion & unwanted pregnancies, encouraging scientific education. These are worthwhile proposals which may, indeed, help lessen the chance of war and reduce a long term risk of terrorism.
But here the authors have wandered into a problem which they think they understand, but don't. They think they've figured out how to prevent terrorism. They don't. I do. But don't take my word. Judge for yourself. Check out my book on Amazon. It's "Common Sense II: How to Prevent the Three Types of Terrorism". It prevents smuggled nuclear bombs and all other types. The Potts/Hayden book doesn't. Theirs is a typical mistake made by intellectuals who think they can apply their far-reaching and considerable expertise to a dangerous problem, but their expertise blinds them, and they fail to grasp the problem.
Regarding the title "Sex and War", is there a more titillating title? How long did they take to dream this up? Two seconds? The title writers, no doubt, watched the movie Bonnie & Clyde and know Americans love sex and violence, and wow, this stuff sells. And the combination of an academic authority with a journalist? Potts and Hayden are like the Donnie & Marie of primate biology (...she's a little bit country, he's a little bit rock & roll!...) A more apt analogy -- they're the "Dr. Phil" of primate biology, wagging fingers at men behaving badly, entertaining women, except both authors have more hair. After all, aren't women the ones who buy books today? Women, be forewarned: there's lots of raping in this book. It reads well & entertains but the book could have been more focused, tighter. It's written in the style of Guns, Germs & Steel but without the fresh and powerful connections.
Still, this book is a worthwhile read, enlightening, will be helpful to students of biology and war and primatology and anthropology and will be quoted by feminists ad nauseum.
Gripping book December 1, 2008
Jennifer N. Canzoneri (Dallas, Texas)
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Fascinating work that offers a hopeful take on the history (and future) of humanity. A must-read for any history buff or anyone interested in the origins of sex & war.
Interesting, different aspect October 29, 2008
Book maker
1 out of 4 found this review helpful
The book doesn't just accept the sociological view of the development for certain kinds of violence--it digs into scientific research to show that biology most likely has its place in our violent world. It also shows what we can do to change the direction we're headed in.
A fascinating, eye-opening read.
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