The Female Brain
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List Price: $14.95
Our Price: $10.17
Your Save: $ 4.78 ( 32% )
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Manufacturer: Broadway
Written By: Louann Brizendine
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Binding: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 612.8
EAN: 9780767920100
ISBN: 0767920104
Label: Broadway
Manufacturer: Broadway
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 304
Publication Date: 2007-08-07
Publisher: Broadway
Release Date: 2007-08-07
Studio: Broadway
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Editorial Reviews for The Female Brain
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Why are women more verbal than men? Why do women remember details of fights that men can’t remember at all? Why do women tend to form deeper bonds with their female friends than men do with their male counterparts? These and other questions have stumped both sexes throughout the ages.
Now, pioneering neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, M.D., brings together the latest findings to show how the unique structure of the female brain determines how women think, what they value, how they communicate, and who they love. While doing research as a medical student at Yale and then as a resident and faculty member at Harvard, Louann Brizendine discovered that almost all of the clinical data in existence on neurology, psychology, and neurobiology focused exclusively on males. In response to the overwhelming need for information on the female mind, Brizendine established the first clinic in the country to study and treat women’s brain function.
In The Female Brain, Dr. Brizendine distills all her findings and the latest information from the scientific community in a highly accessible book that educates women about their unique brain/body/behavior.
The result: women will come away from this book knowing that they have a lean, mean, communicating machine. Men will develop a serious case of brain envy.
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Consumer reviews:
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Customer Rating:  
Summary: The reviewer's page does not fit with the book!!!
Comment: When I entered the page to write my review of what I thought an easy and interesting reading, I found surprise after surprise. First there is the author's blog section:
"Thank you for reading and using my book in your life. I have heard from many of you out there who are reading "The Female Brain"-a soldier in his bunk in Iraq after his wife sent him the book in a care package [...]-a truck driver in the Midwest who just had his wife leave him after twenty-eight years and wants to know how to get her back-and many others of you who are finding answers to questions about female emotions [...], choosing who to love and marry"[???] [...] "I have heard from many men that they wish they had had the information in this book when they were younger-one 82-year-old man wrote saying it would have "saved me from many mistakes with women in my life". I hope you will write to me too and let me know how it has influenced your life and our relationships."[...]
Am I in the wrong book page? This blog of the author does not fit with the book I have read. This sounds more like a "self-help" book or a cliché of differences between sexes. If these statements from the author would have been on any the book's covers, I definitely would not have bought it. The book was supposed to be a science book and I believe it was also what the author wanted to convey (while reading it, it seemed scientific to me). Are the author's hormones to blame for this radical change?. The worst review in this page is the author's blog post itself.
Second I was surprised to see the huge polarization in the reviewers rankings, it seems that either you love the book, because it helps you understand sex differences and will probably help you to cope with them or you truly dislike it for being sexist, unprofessional and full of mistakes. I think the problem is the different expectations with which each reviewer approaches the book (intensified by the author's position). Is it a self-help book or a science book?
As I read the book, I found it interesting and entertaining. What interested me most was how the different genetic information contained in the Y and X chromosomes inffluences the development of the not born babies' brains. How this inffluences the relative sizes of some parts of their brains and its implications for the future sex differences in children and adults. (I hope this Info is not mistaken). The inffluence of hormones during a woman's life cycle is also very interesting. I agree with another reviewer that this is by no means deterministic, but I do believe (in fact I am sure) that hormones have an inffluence on women's moods and probably attitudes.
I would have rated the book with 4 stars until the author herself made me completely distrust everything inside it.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Male bashing disguised as pseudoscience
Comment: To be fair, the book has some valid points. For example, it admits that differences between male and female behaviour have a biological cause besides a cultural one. It teaches some bits of information which are useful to know. For example, about the female hormonal cycle. I won't explain about the lack of scientific rigueur of this book because this has been beautifully done in the reviews by David H. Peterzell and Linda Hirshman. I wanted to add something new.
This is one of the most sexist books I have read in a long time. The subtext of this book, the idea which is hammered once and again throughout the book can be summarized like that: "The female brain is superior in everything with respect to the male brain, except for sexual desire and aggression"
Even more outraging is the view of the author towards men who are depicted like some kind of Neandhertals, clearly inferior creatures who are unable to understand the subtleness and goodness of women and are only able of aggression and disruptive behavior. Let's see an example from page 21 :
"So why is a girl born with such a highly tuned machine [her brain] for reading faces [...]? This is the result of millenia of [...] evolutionary hardwiring that once has - and probably still has - real consequences for survival. If you can read faces [...], you can tell what an infant needs. You can predict what a bigger, aggressive male is going to do. And since you're smaller, you probably need to band with other females to fend off attacks from a ticked off caveman - or cavemen".
Look how men are depicted. Bigger, aggressive people who want to attack women. Even more, to defend from such a threat, women have to band with each other. Hello? Is it anything inside the author's brain? Have you seen band of females to protect from males anywhere in the world?
The ones who have ALWAYS protected females from danger have been MEN. When a thief enters a home, it is the male who is going to see what happens while the woman tries to stay in a safe place. When a band is trying to attack a local village, it is the local men who get their guns and go out to face the danger, while women stay in their homes. When an army is trying to invade a country, armies composed of men protect their women for being invaded and submitted. Men die for women to be safe. But the author has such a negative view of men that indulges in a fantasy of women banding themselves, which is absurd and has never happened.
This could be only a mistake, but the book is full of derogatory language against men. "[The boys] would break anything [the girls] have created. The boys pushed the girls around, refused to take turns and would ignore the request of a girl to stop or to give the toy back" (page 11), "[Boys don't use language to get consensus the way girls do but] use language to command others, get things done, brag, threaten, ignore a partner's suggestion and override each other's attempts to speak. It was never long after Joseph's arrival on the playground that Leyla ended up in tears" (page 22). I could go on and on, but you get the idea.
On the contrary, women are depicted as a nearly angelical creatures. "If you are a girl, you are programmed to make sure you keep social harmony" (page 21). Hello? Has somebody worked in an office full of women and see the meanness, intrigues and subtle backstabbing that they have in their social interactions? And what about a woman in a divorce court? Girls are not always mean and boy are not always good but it is certainly not the other way around either.
After reading this book, I can't help wondering why over the last five decades women, who make up roughly 50 percent of the world's population, have claimed only 2 percent of the Nobel Prizes in the sciences, 8 percent in literature and 0 percent in economics. Why is this? If women are so superior to men, if men are only able to obsess about sex and proceed to aggression (because "they are marinated by testosterone") and are superated in any other aspect by women?
(During that period Jews, who were an oppressed minority and who comprise less than 0.5 percent the world's population, have claimed 32 percent of the Nobel Prizes for medicine, 32 percent for physics, 39 percent for economics and 29 percent of all science awards.)
If you are reading this, nearly everything that you see right now has been invented (and done) by a man. Your computer, your Internet, the Web, your room, the electrical power and so on. Maybe men are not that useless and dumb after all, are we?
I am really sorry for the author's son. It won't be easy for him to grow up with a mother who has so much contempt towards boys.
So if you are a feminist eager to feel superior to men, please buy this book and you will be reassured in your beliefs.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Sexist pseudoscience aimed at promoting the author's favourite pharmaceutical
Comment: As a product of the female brain, I'm afraid to say that this disgraceful excuse for objective research does more damage to the reputation of female brain power than the worst mysogynist could. Just as I would reject research from an Anti-Semite that showed that Jews are genetically disadvantaged, research from a Ku Klux Klanner that showed that African-Americans are stupid, or research by a communist showing that capitalists are more greedy, so I do not consider research from a proven mysandrist who has shown that men are mentally inferior to women.
Louann 'Zoloft' Brizendine does no favours for the many intelligent women in the world by lumping them altogether into a mysogynistic community which 'men will develop a serious case of brain envy' over. Men will only start developing 'brain envy' when these supposedly superior brains put their money where their mouth is, and demonstrate their superiority. Instead, in the realms of brain power and its corresponding creativity these Einsteins have put on a poor show. There are no long lines of women outside the US Patent office, waiting to introduce to the world their brainwaves. Instead, they show the typical failure of supposedly master multitaskers to have any UNItasking skills, which alone can give one the focused, concentrated thinking necessary for a level of mentation far above that ever dreamed of by Ms Zoloft. What she demonstrates with this drivel are the devastating results of combining an unconscious inferiority complex with ignorance and arrogance. I don't know how much commission Brizendine is getting from Zoloft for promoting and marketing their products in a work of 'objective research', but I have no doubt the association of Zoloft with the paltry abilities of Brizendine can in the long term only damage the reputation of the pharmaceutical in question.
Don't, don't, don't waste your money on this book now - soon it will be cheaper than toilet paper, when at last it could be used to serve a useful function.
Customer Rating:
Summary: It went into the trash
Comment: I read this as a layperson and came to the conclusion that it was a skewed collection of misinformation meant only to cushion between its pages the promotion of specific drugs. The only thought provoked by this book was, "How much did the drug companies pay her?" I keep or donate all of my books. Not this one--it went straight into the recycle bin.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Empowering
Comment: Let me ask all the women readers a question?
If you had access to Aladdin's lamp, what would your three wishes be. Eternal youth? Money? Power? Think again, I agree with Louann Brizedendine, Author of "The Female Brain", that all of us really want:
More joy in our lives
A fulfilling relationship
And last but not the least, more personal time to grow.
Men often wonder what women want? The key to this secret is in understanding that women have a special gift. Not only we have an exquisitely configured prefrontal gyrus and hippocampus but our neurons are constantly being suffused by the Big E and the Big O. This potent synergy endows us with the magic of being smart AND nurturing. Our grandmothers and mothers ( successful home makers) have shown us by example that the "Hand that rocks the cradle rules the world." This adage is even more relevant today.
You might have heard the Dalai Lama's recent address that: HE WOULD LIKE TO SEE MORE WOMEN WORLD LEADERS. (Are the men listening? Ready or not, here we come!)
In the 21st Century, for the first time, women are enjoying the luxury of pursuing intellectual and scientific pursuits. Today we have a better control of our hippocampus-triggered emotions, fertility and economic independence. Now is the time to logically eye-ball our responsibilities and appropriately utilize our social support system and technology to juggle the role of a model "care-giver" with any challenging profession. Remember, we lead with style and panache.
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More Information on The Female Brain
The Female Brain (book) - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Female Brain is a book by Louann Brizendine, M.D., whose main thesis is that women’s behavior is radically different from that of men due to hormonal differences.
LouannBrizendine.com
Since my book, “The Female Brain,” was published, I have received so many questions on my web site from teen girls who have read the chapter called “The Teen Girl Brain ...
thefemalebrain.org
She said her study shows that the female brain is “critically sensitive” to genistein and equol during this crucial stage of development. This may indicate that the brain is ...
Broadway Books | The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine, M.D.
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The Female Brain by Louann Brizendine, M.D. - eBook - Random House
The Female Brain Written by Louann Brizendine, M.D. Format: eBook ISBN: 9780767928410 Our Price: $9.95
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