The paperback edition of our book Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters is going to be published tomorrow (02 September 2008), which means that it’s been exactly one year since the billionaire adventurer Steve Fossett went missing.
On 04 September 2007, the day of the hardcover publication of the book, I had a brief appearance on Fox News Live, and was interviewed by Jane Skinner about the book. Fox News had kindly sent a car to pick me up at my office at LSE and escort me to its local London studio on the south bank of the Thames. They had hired a makeup artist for me (the first time I had worn makeup in my life) and I was ready to go on the air for the live interview.
However, my segment kept getting pushed back repeatedly because Steve Fossett had gone missing on the previous day, and they had updates on the status of the search every 10 minutes. In the end, my segment was greatly cut back because they had run out of time.
At the time, I was angry with Fossett because I had assumed that this was just a minor mishap and he would soon turn up fine somewhere in the desert. I had even suspected some sort of a publicity stunt on his part. I had no idea that he would soon be declared dead by the court. Of course, the possibility of foul play can never be ruled out completely, and I suppose there are still rumors to this day. I personally cannot figure out how his plane can completely disappear and how they can fail to find the wreckage in the desert after one year of intensive search.
At any rate, for those of you who are not yet familiar with our book, it is a general (nonacademic and nontechnical) introduction to the field of evolutionary psychology. In her review of the book in the electronic journal Evolutionary Psychology, Jaime C. Confer of the University of Texas - Austin writes “Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters is presented in an engaging and straightforward manner to bring evolutionary science into the lives of your next-door neighbors.... Readers are left with a taste of how evolutionary influences permeate nearly every facet of daily life.... For a beginning primer that opens the mind to the world of evolutionary psychology, Miller and Kanazawa’s Why Beautiful People Have More Daughters is a great start.” Her book review is titled “Ultimate Answers for Common Questions.” If you are already familiar with evolutionary theory, you will get her word play.
If you are interested in learning more about evolutionary psychology, I would very highly (albeit, admittedly, prejudicially) recommend the paperback edition of our book, available at discount from Amazon.com, Amazon.co.uk, Barnes&Noble.com.
