The Red Queen

Two fascinating questions lie at the heart of The Red Queen: Why is Homo sapiens a sexual species, and what implications does this have for human nature? That man is sexual may seem unremarkable, yet in fact not all plants and animals need to have sex to reproduce; simple cloning is practiced by many animals with much greater efficiency. To understand how life evolves, and what benefit sex provides for humans, we must think like the Red Queen in Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, who had to keep running just to stay in place. According to a controversial yet persuasive new theory,…