How can an academic who does not believe evil spirits cause illness harbor the hope that her cancer may be cured by a healer who enters a trance to battle her demons? Whose actions are more (or less) honorable: those of a prostitute who sells her daughter's virginity to a rich man, or those of a professor who sanctions her daughter's hook-ups with casual acquaintances? As they immerse themselves in foreign cultures and navigate the relationships that take shape, the authors of these essays, most of them trained anthropologists, find that accepting cultural difference is one thing,...

There is a human genetic fluke that is surprisingly common, due to a change in a key pair of chromosomes. In the normal condition the two look the same, but in this disorder one is malformed and shrunken beyond recognition. The result is a shortened life span, higher mortality at all ages, an inability to reproduce, premature hair loss, and brain defects variously resulting in attention deficit, hyperactivity, conduct disorder, hypersexuality, and an enormous excess of both outward and self-directed aggression.

It is called maleness.

In Women After All, Melvin Konner...