The Female Brain This book definitely is not just a guide for women to understand themselves. As a male reader I have found it so useful in inderstanding not only why she (my wife) or they (the women we love/hate)act the way they do. Also I understand now why people say that "men are all the same" or "women are all the same". From the brain's structure perspective and it's interaction with hormones and other "stuff" we are all the same, men and women. This regarding only to that perspective and not the environmental, past experiences, education, social level, and that type of influences, which in fact could shape our personalities in such different ways.

I guess that now I vave a more accurate perspective that will help me a lot in raising my girls properly.

This book itself will not explain why everything is the way it is, since there are millions of other facts that will actually influence behaviour and reactions in diverse people and situations, but on the other hand it actually gives you many facts and references to people and studies that brings to the different "theories" and/or conclusions showed.

It is such a great book for both men and women that I recomend it to everyone.

This book helps to explain the emotional roller coaster that some girls and women find themselves on. Dr. Louann Brizendine describes the entire lifespan of the female brain with all of the up-to-date facts. (It helps to know why I'm feeling like I do.) This book was recommended to me by a male friend, I hope just as many men read this book as women.

Having spent many years studying human psychology in both an academic setting and practical, hands-on settings, I can say that there is some value in this book. That said, I think it makes vast conclusions that are not so useful. For example, no one could seriously argue that there are a few general differences between men and women in, for example, what they find attractive in the opposite sex. (That's why you don't see men wearing lipstick in order to draw in the ladies.) However, in some many areas she seems to have a very black and white point of view. Women are like this, while men are like that, individual variabilities be damned. In fact in the real world there is no reason why women can't be math or philisophical geniuses (and indeed many are). There's no reason why men can't be nuturing, and again many are. I recommend the works of Deborah Tannen as being better scholarship and research.

Best book in a long time. I give it to everybody now and they love it and agree, "Why didn't somebody give this to me when I was 20?" Can't go wrong, great buy, great read.

I was trained as a sociologists to believe that gender differences were socially constructed. Turns out the science does not support this viewpoint....and gender is an important factor in our brains evolved. Would like to read about my brain...but being having two daughters and a lovely wife it is good to get some insight inside the heads of the folks I live with. Highly recommended.

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.

I bought this book at an airport and read it during the flight and found it an easy and interesting reading. When I entered the page to write my review 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. "This book is read by so many people out there who want to choose who to marry and love or who want to make a wife return?" If these statements from the author would have been on any cover of the book, 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 chromosome 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 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.

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.

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 your guns and go to face the danger, while women stay in their homes. When an army is trying to invade your country, armies 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 have 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 mean and boy are 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.

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.

As the production of a 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 not consider research from an Anti-Semite that showed that Jews are greedy, research from a Klanner that showed that Africans are stupid, or research by a communist showing that capitalists have more greed, so I do not consider research from a mysandrist who has shown that men are mentally inferior to women.

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.

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.

Read as a man, the book basically tells you that, no matter what you believe or what women say about the qualities they are looking in a man, they are hard wired to choose the one with cash, a house in the Hamptons, and clothes from Bergdorf & Goodman. I knew that already. So: squander your money (if you have any) or stay single. Good luck.

The problem with this book is that Brizendine actively misrepresents research and uses numbers that are basically made-up. Her "science" doesn't stand up to scrutiny.

For instance, on differences between male and female speech patterns she claims that women speak three times more words than men in a day, and speak almost twice as fast. In fact, no reliable studies had been done when the book came out. Prompted by the book, somebody actually bothered to measure, and it turned out that men and women speak about the same number of words, and men speak (very slightly) faster. You can get details about the studies from the excellent blog LanguageLog, which reports on real linguistic science. Google for the post titled "Gabby guys: the effect size".

In sum: This book should be filed in the Fiction section, not the Science section.

I loved this book - finished it in an hour. At first I was put off by her approach, but then realized there was a meth od in the madness. Dr. Benzedrine is a rush!

This book was very readable and highly informative. I have recommended it to many of my friends and colleagues. It should be required reading for every couple! I thoroughly enjoyed and appreciated the author's scientific approach, knowledge of hormonal influences on the brain, and life cycle approach. I felt acknowledged and so much more "normal" after reading this book. My mother (an active 78) read it and plans to share it with her other 2 daughters, 3 other grandaughters and newest grandaughter-in-law. My husband is reading it now, and my daughter is next on the list. Don't miss it!

This is the highlight of my reading year. The most insightful exploration of the female mind, I have ever enjoyed. A MUST read for young girls, young lovers, new and old Moms and if they dare, men who want to understand.

Don't listen to the naysayers.

Brizendine has had the guts to broach a touchy subject in a touchy era. For nearly half a century now the feel good political correctness movement--spearheaded by the feminist movement starting in the 60s--has tried to persuade us to ignore what is obvious to anyone with eyes open, that men and women are different. And they do this under the auspice of all of us just getting along. (Alas, the feminist call for us to just get along, if anything, supports Brizendine's claim that women will say and do just about anything to preserve societal harmony.)

To support this let's-all-get-along movement the idea that men and women are essentially identical at birth and are only "socialized" into gender indentity and gender roles has been carved into the cultural Zeitgeist as if gospel. But now that research is starting to uncover the fact that this nurture rationale for gender differences has been overstated for the past fifty years, the old guard is up in arms. For sure, they are simply in denial that their precious theories are turning out to be hogwash. (I recommend reading "How Nature Made Him: The Boy Who Was Raised as a Girl," which recounts how the original case study meant to support the socialization of gender identity/role turned out to be a load of hooey.)

Brizendine's critics, such as Peterzell, are actually living in some fantasy world, where sexual differences are somehow washed out in statistical apologetics. For example, you may hear that the variation within groups is greater than the variation between groups--meaning that men and women will overlap, statistically, in traits we would associate with "feminine" and "masculine." What you won't hear is why such traits are considered "feminine" or "masculine" to begin with if they do not have some kind of intrinsic connection to womanhood and manhood, respectively. In other words, they tell us that gender differences are not great enough to warrant distinction while at the same time using the very distinctions that are near universal in every human culture on earth to distract us from these distinctions. (Women are tough enough to serve in the military...but, aha, why can't men be more peaceloving like women?)

The academics need to make up their minds. Either men and women are different or they are not. To try to rationalize away a difference is not science. It is politics. Brizendine's book is a bold step in saying enough is enough. Pretending that there is no difference, or that the difference is insignificant is not doing a service to society. It is only making us more confused.

Excellent book, written based on research findings, author is witty and writes with flair and knowledge. The information clears up many questions and noticed differences between the thinking patterns and behavior between male and females. This book is very interesting, both men and women should read and will find benefit in this book. The content also supplies hours of content for converations between readers.

I loved this book. It really helped me undertand a)what mt preteen is going through, b)why for one week (each month) I'm extremely communicative and for another week I can't string a sentance together. I was really surprised by the negative reviews written here. I've recommended this book to all my girlfriends. I'm thrilled with it. It is difficult to find a brain-book that the non-medical community can understand and enjoy. It's a little dramatized with the narrative, but it has a ton of relevent information. I dog-eared about 50 pages.

As a practicing clinical psychologist there is only one major objection I have to this book; the male bashing. "The Female Brain" (Paperback)by Dr. Louann Brizendine is otherwise a useful for tool for the lay person. It is very readable and highlights some of the issues and concerns many of us should be considering in our relationships.
It essentially comes down to this. Brizendine says there are real differences between the sexes and these differences are in some ways connected to the endocrine system (hormones) that operate differently through the lifespan in men and women. By becoming more aware of these differences one is armed to think differently and approach problem solving differently because of a hightened respect for the sexually based differences. While I have no problem with her as a female advocate she fails herself and the reader by allowing male bashing to sneak into what could otherwise be, academic objections withstanding, a useful icebraker for real discussion and understanding. Perhaps an edited version with more discipline is in order but I would still recommend exposure to her work as an awareness enhancement tool.

This book presents a chapter-by-chapter description of the phases which women go through during the course of their lives. For the most part, it's easy to read, and offers some insights. But there is an issue which should always be considered with books like this, and that is the degree to which the author's own background and culture influences and informs her work. Ideally, professional scientists should completely detach themselves from any cultural or moralistic hues, and be strictly objective. This is not the case here. I have noticed this trend particularly with American writers, who, maybe due to American idealism or political correctness, tend to go the "softly-softly" and squeamish route in describing biology, at the expense of a more frank and objective discussion which would be favored by their counterparts across the pond - the British.

For example, in describing biological facts, she quickly adds that the goal of this knowledge is so people can strive to override them and be more in tune with cultural values (which ones, the Anglo-Saxon ones? which are so special, how?). Even David Buss, the famous American biologist, sometimes falls into this trap. But at least Buss acknowledges other cultures, with different values, besides the Anglo-Saxon one.

Unless and until an American scientist or researcher can produce a frank, objective work on this subject, with no cultural hues but just the facts, no matter how unpalatable, I think it's better to read science/biology books by the less-naive British authors.

What she got wrong is a lot. Here is just a glimpse: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/ideas/articles/2006/09/24/sex_on_the_brain/

I recommend the entire article, as well as doing more research. Here is a snippet:
``Most studies reported either that men talked more than women, either overall or in some circumstances, or that there was no difference between the genders in amount of talk." The research since that review, including counts from my own research, follows the same pattern.

I haven't been able to find any scientific studies that reliably count the entire daily word usage of a reasonable sample of men and women. But based on the research I've read and conducted, I'm willing to make a bet about what such a study would show. Whatever the average female vs. male difference turns out to be, it will be small compared to the variation among women and among men; and there will also be big differences, for any given individual, from one social setting to another.

Unfortunately, this is just one of several cases in recent books on sex and neuroscience where striking numbers turn out to be without apparent empirical support. On page 36 of ``The Female Brain," Brizendine writes that ``Girls speak faster on average-250 words per minute versus 125 for typical males." In support of this assertion, her endnotes cite Bruce P. Ryan, ``Speaking rate, conversational speech acts, interruption, and linguistic complexity of 20 pre-school stuttering and non-stuttering children and their mothers," Clinical Linguistics & Phonetics, 14(1), pp. 25-51 (2000). Alas, in Ryan's paper, you won't find the 250 vs. 125 numbers, and in fact, he gives no data at all that breaks down speaking rates by sex.

The truth is out there, however, in many studies over the years that do give figures for speaking rates of females and males of various ages. The most recent data comes from a paper presented at a conference this month, in which Jiahong Yuan, Chris Cieri, and I looked at various measures of speaking rate in thousands of English and Chinese telephone conversations. We found that in both languages, the males spoke about 2 percent faster, on average, than the females. This effect was small compared to the variation among female or male speakers, and it was also small relative to the effect of situational factors. For example, people talking with family or friends spoke about 10 percent faster than people talking with strangers.

These numbers might be unrepresentative or otherwise mistaken, but we've documented the procedures we used and the data we analyzed. And we used conversations that have been published as digital audio, along with time-aligned transcripts and demographic data for the speakers, so others can check our work if they want to.

This ability to check or replicate research is central to scientific progress. It doesn't stop people from disagreeing about facts and theories, but it helps organize the arguments and keep them on track.

The authors of self-help works, as a group, don't seem to have any particular standards of accuracy. Journalists, meanwhile, generally take them at their word in reviews and interviews, and publishers are happy as long as the books sell well.

It's a shame to see this approach to the facts spreading into the growing genre of books about the neuroscience of sex differences, where the facts can have real consequences.

Dr. Brizendine admits, "In writing this book I have struggled with two voices in my head - one is the scientific truth, the other is political correctness. I have chosen to emphasize scientific truth over political correctness even though scientific truths may not always be welcome." It is rare that anyone who is in favor of political correctness openly admits that it conflicts with scientific truth. It is also interesting that she says she has "chosen" scientific truth; this statement implies that it was a choice she had to consider.

At no point in the book does Dr. Brizendine draw politically incorrect conclusions from the scientific data, even when they seem inevitable. She verifies at length that the moodiness and changeability men notice in women is not only real, but neurochemically based. She tap-dances around the inevitable mention of Lawrence Summers' being forced to resign from the presidency of Harvard for mentioning that men more frequently show scientific ability than women do by explaining that it isn't that women can't do math and science, it's just that those things require working alone, and women's hormones make working on their own without constant feedback and guidance from others intolerable for them. (Personally, I'm a woman and a loner, and the idea of working with other people makes me want to jump off a building.) Also, in discussing how women choose men who will be good providers as mates, she says, "Though single motherhood has become fashionable among some sets of modern women, it remains to be seen how well this model will succeed." This is disingenuous; a few minutes of research would have shown her that it has already been seen how well this model will succeed, and that is not very well at all. Children with absent fathers have a far higher incidence of delinquency, behavioral problems, mood disorders, and academic trouble.

Another example comes in the discussion of mothers of infants. Dr. Brizendine reveals that the feelings of withdrawal new mothers feel when they are separated from their babies are hormonally based, and admits that when she herself went back to work when her son was only five months old, she "was a wreck on most days". That is, not only are working mothers of infants not being very good mothers, they're also not being very good workers. Naturally she doesn't suggest that maybe, just maybe mothers should at least wait until their children are past babyhood before skipping back to the office, not even when she goes on to detail the deleterious physical effect on the "trust and security circuits" in the brains of children whose mothers are inattentive, an effect that lasts for a lifetime, nor when she details the behavioral troubles exhibited by the children of mothers who work full-time. Instead, she tries to claim that having someone else take care of your children is okay because female monkeys sometimes leave their babies with other monkeys. What she glosses over is that these other monkeys are the babies' aunts or grandmothers - relatives with a genetic motivation to take good care of the babies. So yes, if there's a grandmother or aunt or other close relative to babysit your baby while you work, that will work well. But many of us don't live that near relatives who are willing to babysit, and dumping your toddlers off at daycare to be raised by strangers making minimum wage isn't remotely the same thing.

However, for Dr. Brizendine, simply admitting that the differences between men and women are biologically based and not social constructs was probably going frighteningly far, and for that, she deserves credit.

The book verifies that boys are not only larger, but also more aggressive, more disruptive, and less mentally mature than girls of the same age, but doesn't follow through to the obvious politically incorrect conclusion that maybe co-education isn't such a great idea. Hey, why not lock up a bunch of helpless little girls with unsocialized children who are larger, stronger, more aggressive, less mature and less self-controlled than they are? Even when she explains that teenage girls spend hours in the bathroom together because "It's the only private place at school we can go to *talk*!", the author does not seem to notice that she is building a case against co-education.

One of the most intriguing passages in this book was when the author explained that the proverbial "fight or flight" response is actually the male response to danger; females, prevented by their smaller size or by the need to protect their young from fighting or flying, are more apt to respond with "tend or befriend". She cites the example of a teenage girl she knew, Elana, whose best friend started insulting another girl who Elana had once been friends with. Even though Elana didn't like this behavior, she meekly let it pass without a word of protest because she was too frightened of losing the friendship. According to Dr. Brizendine, a great deal of female behavior is motivated by this fear of loss of a relationship. This doesn't speak well for women's ability to stand up for their friends or fight for a principle in the face of opposition, but, well, that's why we have men.

For the most part, the science in this book is pretty solid, but there are a couple of areas where Dr. Brizendine accepted common wisdom rather than examining it. For example, there is a chapter detailing the hormonal changes that allegedly explain turbulent adolescent behavior, an idea that has gained widespread acceptance in the media and in water-cooler conversations. The problem is, the entire concept of adolescence, as well as the notion that this is a time of inevitable stormy emotion and behavior, didn't exist until the 20th century and is peculiar to the industrialized West. The turbulence is caused by the artificial prolonging of childhood into the years when humans should be working and starting a family, not by hormones. Try expecting someone in his or her thirties to follow rules made for children and see if the result isn't some storminess.

Another problem area was when Dr. Brizendine tried to prove that men are virtually incapable of noticing changes in other peoples' expression. According to her, their brains just don't register it, whereas women's do, and this is where we get the idea of women's intuition. Unfortunately for her, I just read a book (Everyday Mind Reading: Understanding What Other People Think and Feel) that thoroughly debunks the idea of women's superior intuition. In fact, men are just as adept as reading people's faces as women. Which didn't surprise me; if men were really as inept at this as Dr. Brizendine claimed, novels written by men would be devoid of mention of characters' expressions, and no male spy would last for more than a day before getting himself killed.

There is a regrettably short appendix about sexual orientation, which verifies the common belief that Lesbians are more likely to display masculine characteristics than straight women. According to the book, prenatal exposure to testosterone is one of the causes of both homosexuality and unconventional gender behavior in women.

The blurb claims that men who read this book will "develop a serious case of brain envy". I doubt that; I'm a woman, and this book made me devoutly wish I could get a retroactive sex change operation.

this book is very well written. it addresses many of the major issues surrounding the interaction of the endocrinological and neurological systems. this is a fantastic weekend read. i think that men and women alike will appreciate much of the discussion and conclusions in this book, maybe more so the men. very good book, certainly not a must read for professionals, but excellent for men trying to understand women or for women exploring possible influences to their thinking and behavior.

I have recommended this book to every female in my life. It answers so many questions I have had about myself and my body. Louann Brizendine even answers questions I didn't know I had. Everything is very well explained and has anecdotal examples of how and why women are the way they are. Excellent book. If you are on the fence, buy it. You won't regret it.

Excellent information, thoroughly researched, acessible to the layman. I learned so much about the reasons behind women's motivation and behavior. Fascinating. I especially found useful the chapter about the "mommy brain" and as a high school English teacher, the chapter on the teen brain. I recommend to all women of all ages who sometimes question their hormonal swings. Very empowering and the author supports with a lifetime of research. The only flaw, but minor, is some redundancy.

This book is the best. The author presents the information in such a readable and delightful way that you don't want to put it down. It is technical, serious and humorous all at the same time. I haven't been able to quit recommending this book to, well almost everyone I meet. Not only have I given it to my daughters, I recommend to all the males that ever wondered how women think.

This book gives biochemical and anthropologic reasons for the emotional and psychological differences that women have compared to men, from birth through old age. It's intriguing to read as a woman and I think it would give men a heck of a lot more insight into 'how we work.' It's a must read for women and men alike in all stages of life and/or a relationship.

I was very dissapointed in this book, it was not at all what I expected. It was not what I was looking for. I was really looking for answers to female problems such as perimenopause, and menopause . That is not what this book is about at all. I have many other books that hit what I want more than this one did.

I was just able to understand certain things better pertaining to how us women think, I really thought it was a good buy.

This book is designed to address the biological reasons for the changing feelings and the changing perception(?) of reality that women experience through different phases of life.
If Amazon had 1/2 ratings available, then I'd give it the half to make it 3 1/2 stars. But I rounded up because this book met my expectation that sought an entertaining read about the pysche of women throughout their entire life. However, had I been searching for a scientific read with hard-facts, then I would have been thoroughly disappointed.
Although many reviews criticize the book for its lack of reference to scientific evidence, it appears to me that the book is geared to the masses. It just happens to be that the author is a well-educated neuropsychiatrist. (And based on the cover of the book, it looks like its being marketed as such.)
One point of contention is the "I-am-woman-hear-me-roar" and nearing-male-bashing tone. The tone is rather annoying and unnecessary to make the point for which the book is intended.

When I first saw THE FEMALE BRAIN an imaginary sticker read: "Pick me up and buy me." So I did. When I read it I was so impressed that I bought copies for nine of my closest women friends.

As a neuroscientist and psychiatrist, Dr. Brizendine brings together brain research findings with experiences of women who come to her so that every woman who reads the book can be informed about who SHE is. Men too can benefit from the knowledge herein. With 59 pages of References, this book is obviously soundly based. Its major attraction, however, is the non-academic, readable text that enables any reader to absorb the message of what makes men and women different.

Louann Brizendine, M.D., the author of "The Female Brain", is more than qualified to discuss the powerful influence that the female brain has upon the beahvior and personalities of girls, teenagers, mothers and adult women. For Dr. Brizendine is a neuropsychiatrist from Berkeley who presently works at the Univ. of California in San Francisco.

I really like how Dr. Brizendine discusses the various features of a woman's brain and invites us to pretend we are scientists when she writes, "If we took an MRI scan of Marcie's brain..." (p. 79) and "If we took an MRI scanner into Sylvia's brain..." (p. 136). I trust that the author understands the mysterious "parst of the female brain" (p. 34), such as the anterior cingulate cortext - "it's the worry-wort center," and the pre-frontal cortext - "the queen that rules emotions and keeps them from going wild" (p. xiii).

"The Female Brain" opens with four pages of names that are people who the author wishes to acknowledge and thank, closes with eighteen pages of footnotes and contians a fifty-eight page bibliography with numerous books and articles in the contemporary neurosciences. The book's seven very readable chapters convey Dr. Brizendine's hope that "men begin adapting to our world" (p. 16). And the book's appendices on homormal therapy, post-partum depression and sexual orientation provide sound advice for those of us who regularly try to help people.

As a guy I clearly learned from Dr. Brizendine the need to appreciate the many areas that women are totally superior to men, such as when "reading faces, hearing emotional tones in voices, and responding to unspoken cues in others" (p. 21). I especially agree with the author when she writes, "Typical men speak fewer words and have less verbal dluency than women, so they may be handicapped in angry exchanges with women" (p. 131). Gosh, no wonder I regularly feel defeated when arguing with a lady. This totally makes sense to me.

A person who purchases "The Female Brain" can expect to gain a confidence with neuroscience and will succeed in developing an understanding and an appreciation of women.

"My intentions for this book were to help women through the various shifts in their lives: shifts so big they actually create changes un a woman's perception of reality, her values, and what she pays attention to. If we can understand how our lives are shaped by our brain chemistry, then maybe we can better see the road ahead." ~ pg. 160

I'm not sure why some reviewers felt this book was so controversial. After reading The Female Brain from cover to cover I found it to be a fairly calming read. Louann Brizendine presents a good overview of how varying levels of testosterone, estrogen, progesterone and oxytocin affect the brain during various stages of life.

Louann Brizendine provides convincing case studies and emphasizes scientific research. She points out the positive and negative aspects of the male and female brain. At first the book seems to be "sex on the brain" but then it mellows into the mothering brain and the mature female brain. I did notice that there is no discussion of women with a more dominant male energy or of males with a more dominant female energy. This would explain why you may disagree with many of the points made in regards to male and female behavior.

"...pretending that women and men are the same, while doing a disservice to both men and women, ultimately hurts women." ~ pg. 161

One of the things I did disagree with includes the notion of men not being able to read facial expressions as well as women. My husband constantly notices my facial expressions and even talks about it in a sensitive way. He seems to understand my moods based on my facial expressions. Your own experience may differ slightly from the assertions made in this book. As far as men not liking this book that may also vary from person to person because my husband picked up this book the minute I wasn't reading it and seemed rather curious about the contents.

What I liked most about this book was the detailed information on how hormones affect daily decisions. This is an excellent read if you want to know how changes in hormone levels affect women at every age. At the end of the book there is also a chapter on hormone replacement therapy.

~The Rebecca Review

I'm not a huge fan of this book, and probably few males are. Honestly, it seems like thinly veiled male bashing, and I've read that some of the references cited by the author are questionable. For example, the 20000 female spoken words per day versus 7000 male words per day claim. I'd like to meet the person, ANY person, who on average speaks 20000 words a day; that number seems more than a bit high unless you're an auctioneer, not to mention the supposed 3:1 ratio in words between women and men. Another problem I have with this book is that it uses vague generalities to describe supposedly prototypical women and men, without acknowledging the vast differences in personality and behavior between individuals within each gender. There is also an overemphasis on sex hormones versus neurotransmitters such as serotonin and norepinephrine, where such neurotransmitter systems probably play a prominent role in encoding many of the characteristics the author ascribes to hormones. On the other hand, the author is good at conveying complex subject matter in simple language, and has a pleasing style of writing. I also think she genuinely cares about her patients, and this comes through in her writing. Overall, worth taking a look. Author of Adjust Your Brain: A Practical Theory for Maximizing Mental Health.

I picked up this book after perusing the reviews and was definately not disappointed. If you are a woman, know a woman, or want to know a woman, then pick up this book and read it...cover to cover. For women, it will be a journey of self-discovery and enlightenment. For those who know women, it will shed some light on our daily struggles and "mood swings". For those who want to know a woman, this book will reveal us in all our complexity, simplicity, strength, and weakness. I can't give it enough stars!!!

The book is great! It is easy to read and so very insightful. There are so many things we don't know about when it comes to our own bodies. This book explains one of, if not the most important part!

More than reading The Female Brain i also listened to it after buying it from audiobook.
My advise is that this book is a must read for every man.

The book is very will written and the author Dr. Louann Brizendine did all of us a favour by going very deep in the Female Brain.

I can not wait to see Dr. Louann Brizendine write about the Male Brain,I am sure that it will be another best seller.

Bravo Dr.Brizendine.

Ibrahim Al Mugaiteeb
Saudi Arabia
humanrightsfirst_saudiarabia@yahoo.com

The Female Brain is a great book to read for any parent and coach who is interested to find out about the needs and wants of a woman of different age groups. It is especially good read for the coaches who train women (most of them are men) to understand what drives the women to performance and how to fuel this drive. A must read book!

I began reading the first chapter of the book and I found my self slamming the book down and walking out of the room in an aggressive and angry mood. The first chapter pretty much sums up how she will approach the rest of the book. The largest issue I had is that she does not take into consideration environmental or social factors. Rather, she believes that we are fated by our chemistry. I am a prospective graduate student in philosophy who has done work on intelligibility and epistemology based on our physical and physiological bodies. I specifically used Anne Fausto-Sterling in my work (she's a biologist). She argues that our biology is not just something that happens, but rather our environment has the potential to affect our biology. For instance, today the words in this book caused me to have an angry reaction. I became aggressive and more alert than I was before. The thoughts that occurred in my head triggered a physiological response. Thus, my interpretation of something external caused me to react physiologically. She doesn't address (or at least this is what I gathered from the first chapter) that something externally can cause our hormones to shift. I could ramble on and on , but this is primarily what concerns me.

Dr. Brizendine admits, "In writing this book I have struggled with two voices in my head - one is the scientific truth, the other is political correctness. I have chosen to emphasize scientific truth over political correctness even though scientific truths may not always be welcome." It is rare that anyone who is in favor of political correctness openly admits that it conflicts with scientific truth. It is also interesting that she says she has "chosen" scientific truth; this statement implies that it was a choice she had to consider.

At no point in the book does Dr. Brizendine draw politically incorrect conclusions from the scientific data, even when they seem inevitable. She verifies at length that the moodiness and changeability men notice in women is not only real, but neurochemically based. She tap-dances around the inevitable mention of Lawrence Summers' being forced to resign from the presidency of Harvard for mentioning that men more frequently show scientific ability than women do by explaining that it isn't that women can't do math and science, it's just that those things require working alone, and women's hormones make working on their own without constant feedback and guidance from others intolerable for them. (Personally, I'm a woman and a loner, and the idea of working with other people makes me want to jump off a building.) Also, in discussing how women choose men who will be good providers as mates, she says, "Though single motherhood has become fashionable among some sets of modern women, it remains to be seen how well this model will succeed." This is disingenuous; a few minutes of research would have shown her that it has already been seen how well this model will succeed, and that is not very well at all. Children with absent fathers have a far higher incidence of delinquency, behavioral problems, mood disorders, and academic trouble.

Another example comes in the discussion of mothers of infants. Dr. Brizendine reveals that the feelings of withdrawal new mothers feel when they are separated from their babies are hormonally based, and admits that when she herself went back to work when her son was only five months old, she "was a wreck on most days". That is, not only are working mothers of infants not being very good mothers, they're also not being very good workers. Naturally she doesn't suggest that maybe, just maybe mothers should at least wait until their children are past babyhood before skipping back to the office, not even when she goes on to detail the deleterious physical effect on the "trust and security circuits" in the brains of children whose mothers are inattentive, an effect that lasts for a lifetime, nor when she details the behavioral troubles exhibited by the children of mothers who work full-time. Instead, she tries to claim that having someone else take care of your children is okay because female monkeys sometimes leave their babies with other monkeys. What she glosses over is that these other monkeys are the babies' aunts or grandmothers - relatives with a genetic motivation to take good care of the babies. So yes, if there's a grandmother or aunt or other close relative to babysit your baby while you work, that will work well. But many of us don't live that near relatives who are willing to babysit, and dumping your toddlers off at daycare to be raised by strangers making minimum wage isn't remotely the same thing.

However, for Dr. Brizendine, simply admitting that the differences between men and women are biologically based and not social constructs was probably going frighteningly far, and for that, she deserves credit.

The book verifies that boys are not only larger, but also more aggressive, more disruptive, and less mentally mature than girls of the same age, but doesn't follow through to the obvious politically incorrect conclusion that maybe co-education isn't such a great idea. Hey, why not lock up a bunch of helpless little girls with unsocialized children who are larger, stronger, more aggressive, less mature and less self-controlled than they are? Even when she explains that teenage girls spend hours in the bathroom together because "It's the only private place at school we can go to *talk*!", the author does not seem to notice that she is building a case against co-education.

One of the most intriguing passages in this book was when the author explained that the proverbial "fight or flight" response is actually the male response to danger; females, prevented by their smaller size or by the need to protect their young from fighting or flying, are more apt to respond with "tend or befriend". She cites the example of a teenage girl she knew, Elana, whose best friend started insulting another girl who Elana had once been friends with. Even though Elana didn't like this behavior, she meekly let it pass without a word of protest because she was too frightened of losing the friendship. According to Dr. Brizendine, a great deal of female behavior is motivated by this fear of loss of a relationship. This doesn't speak well for women's ability to stand up for their friends or fight for a principle in the face of opposition, but, well, that's why we have men.

For the most part, the science in this book is pretty solid, but there are a couple of areas where Dr. Brizendine accepted common wisdom rather than examining it. For example, there is a chapter detailing the hormonal changes that allegedly explain turbulent adolescent behavior, an idea that has gained widespread acceptance in the media and in water-cooler conversations. The problem is, the entire concept of adolescence, as well as the notion that this is a time of inevitable stormy emotion and behavior, didn't exist until the 20th century and is peculiar to the industrialized West. The turbulence is caused by the artificial prolonging of childhood into the years when humans should be working and starting a family, not by hormones. Try expecting someone in his or her thirties to follow rules made for children and see if the result isn't some storminess.

Another problem area was when Dr. Brizendine tried to prove that men are virtually incapable of noticing changes in other peoples' expression. According to her, their brains just don't register it, whereas women's do, and this is where we get the idea of women's intuition. Unfortunately for her, I just read a book (Everyday Mind Reading: Understanding What Other People Think and Feel) that thoroughly debunks the idea of women's superior intuition. In fact, men are just as adept as reading people's faces as women. Which didn't surprise me; if men were really as inept at this as Dr. Brizendine claimed, novels written by men would be devoid of mention of characters' expressions, and no male spy would last for more than a day before getting himself killed.

There is a regrettably short appendix about sexual orientation, which verifies the common belief that Lesbians are more likely to display masculine characteristics than straight women. According to the book, prenatal exposure to testosterone is one of the causes of both homosexuality and unconventional gender behavior in women.

The blurb claims that men who read this book will "develop a serious case of brain envy". I doubt that; I'm a woman, and this book made me devoutly wish I could get a retroactive sex change operation.

I found this book very enlightening, well written, sometimes a little technical but on the whole a very interesting insight into the female brain

This book explain about how female sex hormones effect neurotransmitter systems. It's so amazing that female sex hormones could lead to certain female characters and behaviors in the way that I'd never known before. My husband also read this book too, and he said it made him understand me better!

Mrs. Brizendine's book is another book in an undistinguished line of books written in the same unpopular vain by unhappy women who channel their anger into the written word which invariably turns out to be an unwelcome, quickly-tiring, dissertation on the chimerical, and misfortunate topic of "women great - men bad." What is most unfortunate is that Mrs. Brizendine took a topic that has great potential, one that could have made for a very interesting study but apparently let her misandry spill-over into the her subject matter. Instead, she completely loses focus of her subject seems to be more concerned to prove that women's brains are superior to men's brians. Everyone knows that there are differences between men and women, and, unlike what Mrs. Brizendine poorly hypothesized, these differences are good. These differences make us human. Had she just stuck to the topic of the intricacies ofthe female brain book could have been a success! Instead, her book is another testament to what is going wrong in this country today to be ultimately shelved away along with other books of today that will invariably be remembered for that certain period when America took a step-back in human progress while the rest of the world laughed at how misdirected we've become as a nation.

To take one area in which she goes to length -- to say ad nauseam is an understatement -- to prove that women are the superior sex is in the area of aggressiveness. Spending much wasted words on why women are not as aggressive as men not only made for a rapid, page-skimming book fart for this reader but it took her so far off her original topic that many might want to put themselves out of their misery early in the book and try to sell their copy at a second-hand book store and redeem as much money as possible. Using an example from her book, she states that the female brain is much less likely to resort to violence than a man's brain adding that a man can go from calm to fist fight in 30 second. Didn't need the book to know that one. Perhaps what she could have done is explain that for millions of years of our history, it was the male role to protect the female, the family, the clan from wild animals and from intruders. Without the weapons of today this took a lot of courage, even a bit of recklessness knowing that he could easily be mauled. But men are stronger, as they are today, and stood up for their women, daughters, sons at the peril of their own lives. The mechanisms in men that allowed them to be so heroic are still in men today. Our ancestral genes don't die very easy - a fact that she recognizes over and over for women but somehow forgets that men's brains are also a product of evolution. Of course this aggressive tendency is not as necessary today, perhaps even detrimental to some who cannot harness its compulsion, but had she not carelessly overlooked how this has severed humankind for so many millions of years she might have been able to reconcile why the sexes are different (indeed complimentary) instead of trying to make one appear better at the expense of the other.

Another area Mrs. Brizendine saw fit to draw comparisons between the male and female brain, instead of just focusing on an examination of the female brain, was in the area of communications. Repeatedly, she tells the reader that females are better wired for communication. I am not sure that you need a medical degree from Yale to notice this; nevertheless, what she fails to address is that while women can be more talkative, that is not always a positive trait. Indeed, the gift of gab can be a blessing. As humans we need to communicate. But talking for the sake of talking has never served any good or valuable purpose. Instead, what we say, and how we say it is so much more important than how much we say. This is the major reason why men make better authors than women and why our libraries and book stores are filled with books from men and not women. The ability to harness verbal output is also one of the reasons why men do better in the business world as they can communicate much more effectively both diplomatically and charismatically with less wasted words.

It would be very refreshing to read a book written by a woman that highlights the positives of both sexes and not harp - and constantly harp as Mrs. Brizendine does - on the negative when it comes to differences in gender. But until the female "intellectual elite" in this country are composed on women who are not so unhappy with themselves, and less angry with the world in which we live, readers will have to wait for a better written book from a female perspective on such subjects as the one Mrs. Brizendine failed to adequately tackle.

An amazing and insightful book. I purchased one for each of my daughters and my mother. I would recommend this to everyone. Very helpfult for the males in your life as well.