Riddled With Life

Dr. Zuk is first and foremost a terrific parasitologist. The portions of the book that Zuk spends discussing her own Ph.D. thesis and her own research, especially regarding sexual selection. The central portion of the book from about page 80 to page 180 is fascinating & probably should have been released as a stand-alone book – it is focused, it flows and the topic is fascinating (these are the chapters on sexual selection, infection differences between the sexes and sexually transmitted diseases.)

The first 80 pages drag, and are covered both more interestingly and in more detail in hundreds of other popular science books. Also, the topics in these chapters (heterozygote advantage, hygeine hypothesis) have little to do with Zuk's central themes. Theis portion of the book also is infested with what Zuk seems to think are wry little asides, which grate terribly. The concluding paragraphs are interesting, but lack the compulsive readable of the earlier chapters.