The Song Behind Today’s Review Title
On August 6 1991, Next Plateau Records released the fourth single from Blacks’ Magic, then the latest album from the hip hop trio Salt-n-Pepa. The 12-inch record Let’s Talk About Sex went to number 6 on Billboard’s US Dance Club Songs chart and become a staple in discos and gay clubs throughout much of the 1990s. It hit #6 on the Hot 100 chart and was a certified gold record in the US. The tune was nominated for a Grammy Award for “Best Rap Performance by a Duo or Group” in 1992.
At the time of its release the song was considered both groundbreaking and controversial. The lyrics are an invitation to talk about sex and “all the good things and the bad things” that can come from it, including sexually transmitted diseases. Because of that it has reportedly been used by teachers in high school Health classes as a starting point for lessons and discussions with teenagers.
The main line in the chorus is the title for today’s review. It’s appropriate for a review of a book about the science of reproduction.
You can watch and listen to official music video of Salt-n-Pepa’s song here on YouTube. A later generation may know the song from its appearance during the “Riff Off” in the 2012 movie Pitch Perfect. Watch a clip of the “Riff Off” here on YouTube (a riff from the song appears at about 2:40 into the video).
Don’t get too excited by the title of this book. Yes, there is a lot of talk about sex in this book, but its focus is on the science of sex, specifically the science of how sex and gender originated.
For this discussion we are in the capable hands of Dr. Lixing Sun, a research professor at Central Washington University and a 2024-25 Radcliffe fellow at Harvard University. “Evolution”, he says, “is a game with one rule” you win by passing on more of your genes.” The simplest and earliest life forms did that without sex or gender - they reproduced and passed on their genes through asexual cloning or parthenogenesis.
So, why did evolution need sexual reproduction at all? Why does gender exist? Here the story turns to the theory of the “Red Queen”. Basically this theory posits that sex arose specifically as a mechanism to help life forms fight off parasites. Unlike cloning, which keeps the same genetic makeup from generation to generation, sexual reproduction mixes up genes in a way that can help new generations ward off parasites.
Sexual reproduction also avoids the biggest danger of asexual cloning - that is the introduction of mutations into succeeding generations with no mechanism to correct or repair the damage those mutations may cause.
Author and professor Dr. Lixing Sun. He is the author of several books including “The Liars of Nature and the Nature of Liars”. (Photo source: https://www.radcliffe.harvard.edu/people/lixing-sun)
The ability of some creatures to sometimes clone and sometimes reproduce sexually starts Sun down the path of exploring the diversity of ways that animals reproduce and handle gender. There are multiple examples he brings to the table, and I was a bit overwhelmed trying to keep all that diversity straight.
But, as Sun tells us in the Epilogue, science has advanced our understanding of sex and gender so much in the last thirty years that a single book can’t capture it all. This book provides his selection of some of the most interesting discoveries.
This is the perfect book for you if you are a person who is curious about the whys of sex and wants to know more about what science has learned about the evolution of reproduction. I tend to like books about the history of science and while there is some discussion of the scientists behind the discoveries in the book I would have loved to hear more.
RATING: Three Stars ⭐⭐⭐
OVERALL COMMENTS: A book for the person who is curious about the whys of sex, and who wants to know more about what science has learned about the evolution of reproduction.
WHERE I GOT MY COPY: I received an advance reviewer’s copy of the ebook through NetGalley, and courtesy of the publisher Basic Books. The book is available to the public today, Tuesday June 30th, 2026.
Title: On the Origin of Sex
Author: Lixing Sun
Publisher: Basic Books
Publish Date: June 30, 2026
ISBN-13: 9781541609211
Publisher’s List Price: $32.00 hard cover, $19.99 ebook, $27.99 audiobook
Other Books and Stuff
CURRENT BOOKS & STUFF
I finished Black Potatoes by Susan Campbell Bartoletti and am now about three-fourths of the way through Nothing New Under the Sun by Solomon Harrington. It’s a short, independently published book that links new ideas in technology and economics to their historic roots.
Harrington’s book makes three short books I’ve read for a future review, and I’m riffing through my To-Be-Read pile now for a fourth.
Probably the highlight of other media this past week has been watching FIFA World Cup matches on TV. We’ve watched all or part of several matches, including US vs Australia, Canada vs South Africa, and the the shootout that capped Paraguay’s victory over Germany tonight (last night when you get this in your inbox). We’ve also finished Season 3 of Jack Ryan on Prime.
WHAT’S NEXT
Next week I’ll be reviewing Apollo 1. This 2021 book by Ryan Walters tells the story of the “tragedy that put us on the moon”. Here’s the publisher’s summary:
On January 27, 1967, astronauts Gus Grissom, Ed White, and Roger Chaffee climbed into a new spacecraft perched atop a large Saturn rocket at Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a routine dress rehearsal of their upcoming launch into orbit, then less than a month away. All three astronauts were experienced pilots and had dreams of one day walking on the moon. But little did they know, nor did anyone else, that once they entered the spacecraft that cold winter day they would never leave it alive. The Apollo program would be perilously close to failure before it ever got off the ground.
But rather than dooming the space program, this tragedy caused the spacecraft to be completely overhauled, creating a stellar flying machine to achieve the program’s primary goal: putting man on the moon.
Apollo 1 is a candid portrayal of the astronauts, the disaster that killed them, and its aftermath. In it, readers will learn:
How the Apollo 1 spacecraft was doomed from the start, with miles of uninsulated wiring and tons of flammable materials in a pure oxygen atmosphere, along with a hatch that wouldn’t open
How, due to political pressure, the government contract to build the Apollo 1 craft went to a bidder with an inferior plan
How public opinion polls were beginning to turn against the space program before the tragedy and got much worse after
Apollo 1is about America fulfilling its destiny of man setting foot on the moon. It’s also about the three American heroes who lost their lives in the tragedy, but whose lives were not lost in vain.
