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Angela Saini's Top Book Recommendations

Want to know what books Angela Saini recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Angela Saini's favorite book recommendations of all time.

1

The Woman That Never Evolved

What does it mean to be female? Sarah Blaffer Hrdy--a sociobiologist and a feminist--believes that evolutionary biology can provide some surprising answers. Surprising to those feminists who mistakenly think that biology can only work against women. And surprising to those biologists who incorrectly believe that natural selection operates only on males.

In The Woman That Never Evolved we are introduced to our nearest female relatives competitive, independent, sexually assertive primates who have every bit as much at stake in the evolutionary game as their male counterparts...
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Recommended by Angela Saini, and 1 others.

Angela SainiThis is one of the most important science books ever written. Sarah Hrdy overturns centuries of orthodoxy and assumptions about female behaviour and sexuality, with clear, logical, crystal-sharp reasoning, using not just good science but also historical evidence. (Source)

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2
Wally Funk was among the Mercury 13, the first group of American pilots to complete NASA’s 1961 Women in Space program. Funk breezed through the rigorous physical and mental tests, her scores beating those of many of the male candidates—even John Glenn. Just one week before Funk was to enter the final phase of training, the entire program was abruptly cancelled. Politics and prejudice meant that none of the more-than-qualified women ever went to space. Undeterred, Funk went on to become one of America’s first female aviation inspectors and civilian flight instructors, though her dream of... more
Recommended by Angela Saini, and 1 others.

Angela SainiNelson’s book isn’t a history or a biography, but an account of a strange encounter. It’s heartbreaking and touching, but also inspirational. (Source)

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3
From Eve to Evolution provides the first full-length study of American women’s responses to evolutionary theory and illuminates the role science played in the nineteenth-century women’s rights movement. Kimberly A. Hamlin reveals how a number of nineteenth-century women, raised on the idea that Eve’s sin forever fixed women’s subordinate status, embraced Darwinian evolution—especially sexual selection theory as explained in The Descent of Man—as an alternative to the creation story in Genesis.
           
Hamlin chronicles the lives and writings of the women who...
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Recommended by Angela Saini, and 1 others.

Angela SainiWe sometimes forget what the decades in the run-up to women finally getting the vote were like. Hamlin beautifully captures the state of debate at the time, and profiles the incredible women thinkers engaging with these fresh scientific ideas. (Source)

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4
Patricia Fara unearths the forgotten suffragists of World War I who bravely changed women's roles in the war and paved the way for today's female scientists.

Many extraordinary female scientists, doctors, and engineers tasted independence and responsibility for the first time during the First World War. How did this happen? Patricia Fara reveals how suffragists including Virginia Woolf's sister, Ray Strachey, had already aligned themselves with scientific and technological progress, and that during the dark years of war they mobilized women to enter conventionally...
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Recommended by Angela Saini, Barbara Kiser, and 2 others.

Angela SainiFara looks at the sometimes forgotten history of women who took up ‘men’s work’ in science and industry during the First World War. It’s a book that I think fills an important gap in our understanding of the history of suffrage. (Source)

Barbara KiserScience historian Patricia Fara’s powerful book looks at the socio-political ferment around women’s suffrage through a scientific lens. We walk the walk with scores of women in science from the nineteenth century, through the war years and into the early twentieth century, when sexism was pervasive and blatant. (Source)

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5
El mono desnudo es un libro de divulgación científica publicado en 1967 por el zoólogo y etólogo británico Desmond Morris que estudia las características animales que hacen peculiar a la especie humana. A este libro le siguió en 1969 El zoológico humano (The Human Zoo, también traducido como El zoo humano), en el cual examina el comportamiento humano en las ciudades, comparándolo con el comportamiento de los animales de los zoológicos. The Naked Woman: A Study of the Female Body (La mujer desnuda) se publicó en 2004, basado en el gran interés del autor por las ideas feministas. less
Recommended by Angela Saini, Stephane Grand, and 2 others.

Angela SainiThis is a book that demonstrates the misogynistic lens through which some male biologists have viewed the past. Morris routinely and repeatedly peddles the view that women have evolved to be monogamous, stay-at-home caregivers while men have pushed up human intelligence through their actions as hunters and providers. (Source)

Stephane GrandWhen a look back at my career path, it is the one of an entrepreneur. I have built various businesses, from accounting and financial advisory firms to tech and security businesses. I have also spent most of my adult life in China, a country that is quite hostile to foreigners and very unfair. I have accepted to suffer the hardships of building my business without any investment from anybody, and... (Source)

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