PT Bookshelf: The Skim

Sex at Dawn

The Prehistoric Origins of Modern Sexuality

by Christopher Ryan and Cacilda Jetha

The standard evolutionary narrative posits a polygynous (single male, multiple female partners) society, evolving towards monogamy. Sex at Dawn argues that prehistoric societies were open communities in which everything was shared, including childrearing and sex.

The Kitchen Shrink

A Psychiatrist's Reflections on Healing in a Changing World

by Dora Calott Wang, M.D.

Wang's personal experiences offer a window into medicine's shift over the last two decades, from a profession of individual healers to an industry fueled by the drive for ever-expanding profits and diminishing client contact.

Save the Assistants

A Guide to Surviving the Workplace

by Lilit Marcus

A funny and irreverent look at life as an assistant, this book is packed with tips for how to maintain sanity in the face of a bad boss. Marcus includes guides to the characters in your personal episode of The Office.

Delusions of Gender

How Our Minds, Society, and Neurosexism Create Difference

by Cordelia Fine

Fine draws on work from social psychology, neuroscience, and sociology, to demonstrate that the differences between men and women—be they in the brain or in behavior—are strongly influenced by cultural context.

The Evolution of Childhood

Relationships, Emotion, Mind

by Melvin Konner

Konner contends that many contemporary problems—school failures, sexualization of the young, childhood obesity, overstressed parents—result from a clash of evolutionary design with contemporary environments.