The Trouble with Testosterone and Other Essays on the Biology of the Human Predicament by Robert M. Sapolsky
My rating: 4 of 5 stars
I’d like to think that my reading Sapolsky would have been inevitable. My dad read Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers and much later a friend of mine read A Primate’s Memoir. Last week, another friend shared an All Things Considered broadcast about testosterone, which reminded of this collection of Sapolsky’s essays. I’ve read it before, but I have this idea that as we live our lives we change, as readers, so I wanted to give it another read.
Sapolsky is an endocrinologist, and if we can stretch the term, something of a behavior scientist. The thing about learning is, I think we all like to do it, one way or another. So I’m being careful when I say: it’s not that Sapolsky makes science interesting, it’s that he writes so well, we have access to how interesting science is. And that’s saying something. Too often science-writing wallows in thick boring sentences, or almost dissipates in pop-styled bubbles. Sapolsky writes beautifully, and so we can be the curious explorers that we naturally are.
So far I haven’t said anything about this book specifically, as opposed to any of Sapolsky’s books fit for laymen (all of which I’ve read). I guess I want people to read everything. But, for what it’s worth, this collection of essays is as good as any to start with. He touches on many subjects, offering up questions and showing how science is trying to answer those questions, and the pitfalls waiting for jumping to conclusions too soon.
You could go into this book looking for answers about how your mind works or why your body does the things it does, and you might learn a thing or two. But if we read for the sheer pleasure of reading, The Trouble With Testosterone is as good as any work of fiction.