I heard it was coming, but now it’s finally published – The Sexual Evolution was reviewed in Science and… it’s a thumb’s up!

For those that don’t know, Science is a top scientific research journal, first launched in 1880 and, since the 1940s, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). Unlike most research journals, it has the widest possible scope, publishing high impact work across all scientific disciplines. Science and Nature (UK) are the only top-tier journals that cover literally every discipline within the natural and social sciences. So it is a tremendous honor that they chose to review the book, and this lends a great deal of scientific credibility.

Read the review for yourself! (and if you can’t access the article, email me and I’ll send you a copy.)

The reviewer was Justin Garcia, the executive director of the Kinsey Institute, at Indiana University, founded as the Institute for Sex Research in 1947 by Alfred Kinsey himself. Garcia is a prominent researcher of human sexual behavior and trained for his PhD under David Sloan Wilson, an evolutionary theorist whose work I have long admired. (Back in 2019, I had the pleasure of hosting an event at the World Science Festival featuring Wilson and his book, This View of Life, which explains how “evolutionary thinking” can improve how we approach all kinds of societal and interpersonal issues from relationships to criminal justice to public education. I strongly agree with his thesis.)

Given his dual scientific interest in evolution and sex, Garcia was the perfect reviewer for the book and his praise is key scholarly validation of the ideas I present. I hope this will boost book’s profile in this scientific community and extend its reach to an even wider audience. In short, this is really great news.

I also know that this will now put the book on the radar of some reactionaries who won’t agree with some of it. This may be when I start to see the pushback, and perhaps even backlash, that I haven’t actually seen much of so far. But I’m ready for it. Bring it on.

And just FYI, so far the book has also received positive reviews from Publisher’s Weekly (star), Kirkus Reviews, Newsweek, Science 2.0, and Psychology Today. (And no negative ones yet!) And this article also dropped in Science News Explores today, which includes several short videos of me.

A personal plea – you can help. By rating or reviewing wherever you purchase books, you can boost it in search results, etc. So, if you liked the book and you haven’t yet given it a rating, please do! It really does help!

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In other news, next week I am doing some events in the Pacific Northwest. Since I haven’t formally announced most of these, I list all of my upcoming events below. I will be speaking and signing books and I would love to see you! I will be at:

• Town Hall Seattle on April 13 (w/ Cat Bohannon)
• The University of Portland and then Powell’s City of Books on April 15
• The Oakland Public Library on April 16
• The San Francisco Public Library on April 17
• and Book Passage in the Ferry Building on April 18

And then a few days later,

• An author talk at John Jay College on April 23,
• A “Campus Community Conversation” at the University of Buffalo on April 25,
• and later in May I will be doing an event with Agustín Fuentes and Mallika Sarma at the Wagner Free Institute in Philadelphia on May 29th.

(I will also be doing 6 events in the UK in early June, which I will announce in next month’s newsletter.)

• And finally I will be doing a Pride Month event at the New York Public Library with Rachel Feltman on June 23rd.

If you have friends in any of these cities, please let them know that I would love to see them there! The news cycle is absolutely chaos right now and it’s very hard to rise above the noise, so thank you so much for helping me spread the word about The Sexual Evolution.

-NHL

And PS – if you don’t already, follow me on social media. I don’t actually post that much, but I’m trying.