title: The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature
author:  Matt Ridley 
description: Why do we have sex? One of the main biological reasons, contends Ridley, is to combat disease. By constantly combining and recombining genes every generation, people "keep their genes one step ahead of their parasites," thereby strengthening resistance to bacteria and viruses that cause deadly diseases or epidemics. Called the "Red Queen Theory" by biologists after the chess piece in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass which runs but stays in the same place, this hypothesis is just one of the controversial ideas put forth in this witty, elegantly written inquiry. Ridley, a London-based science writer and a former editor of the Economist , argues that men are polygamous for the obvious reason that whichever gender has to spend the most time and energy creating and rearing offspring tends to avoid extra mating. Women, though far less interested in multiple partners, will commit adultery if stuck with a mediocre mate. In Ridley's not wholly convincing conclusion, even human intellect is chalked up to sex: virtuosity, individuality, inventiveness and related traits are what make people sexually attractive. Photos. BOMC and QPB alternates. <BR>Copyright 1994 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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  _About the Author_
  
  MATT R I D L E Y is
  
  the author of _Nature Via Nurture: Genes,_
  
   _Experience, and What Makes Us Human;_ the critically acclaimed national
  bestseller _Genome: The Autobiography of a Species in 23_
  
   _Chapters; The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of_
  _Cooperation;_ and the _New York Times_ Notable Book _The Red Queen: Sex_ _and
  the Evolution of Human Nature._ His books have been short-listed for six
  literary awards, including the Los Angeles Times Book Prize. Formerly a
  scientist, journalist, and a national newspaper columnist, he is a visiting
  professor at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory in New York and the chairman of the
  International Centre for Life in Newcastle, England:
  
  THE RED QUEEN
  
   _Sex and the Evolution of_
  
   _Human Nature_
  
  MATT RIDLEY
  
  Perennial
  
   _An Imprint of_ **HarperCollinsPublishers**
  
   _For Matthew_
  
  This book was first published in Great Britain in 1993 by Penguin Books