The Red Queen by Matt Ridley

The Red Queen by Matt Ridley

"A terrific book, witty and lucid, and brimming with provocative conjectures." (Wall Street Journal) from the author of the acclaimed New York Times bestseller Genome

Brilliantly written, The Red Queen compels us to rethink everything from the persistence of sexism to the endurance of romantic love.

Referring to Lewis Carroll's Red Queen from Through the Looking-Glass, a character 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. 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 Red Queen offers an extraordinary new way of interpreting the human condition and how it has evolved.

Six literary awards have shortlisted Matt Ridley's works, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. His book The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture earned the National Academies of Science award for best science book released in 2003. He is the head of the International Centre for Life in Newcastle, England, and has worked as a scientist, journalist, and national newspaper columnist. He's also a visiting professor at New York's Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory.