A SEPARATE CREATION The Search for the Biological Origins of Sexual Orientation

Hyperion Books (Adult Trd Pap). Very Good. 1996. First Edition. Softcover. 0786882409 . Cover has moderate scuffing and light edge/corner wear. Pages are tight and clean other than approx. 5 pages with a small amount of red underlining, one page with yellow highlighting and a small name stamp on first blank endpage. ; 8vo 8" - 9" tall; 368 pages; "Burr is that rare bird, the journalist who writes well about science. Here, seemingly acting out of the journalistic lust for controversy, he reports on the neurological, endocrinological, and genetic inquiries into why some people are homosexual. But although he regularly notes the politics involved and concludes with a chapter comparing the conflict over homosexuality with the Renaissance battle between church and science over heliocentrism, Burr concentrates on science and sends us on a modern odyssey full of intellectual adventure and revelation. He explains how one researcher discovered a possible difference between homosexual men and others in a particular neural nucleus in the brain; how the "gay gene" (actually, an allele, or alternative form of a gene) was found and how it works; and how genetic surgery (contemplated to be nonintrusive) might alter sexual orientation in adults. However far afield from the subject of sexual orientation Burr seems to stray, the side trips always reconnect with the main road. To counteract how the popular press has misrepresented certain research findings, such as that apparent gay brain difference, Burr reports what the researchers think their discoveries' significances are: the brain difference's discoverer actually claims his findings show only that further similar research holds promise for investigating sexual orientation. Burr also relays the counterarguments, many of them more persuasive, of scientists who think particular findings are either not so significant, misleading, or downright erroneous. Enthralling--unputdownable! --this may be both the gay studies book of the year and the popular-science book of the year. Ray Olson" (480-noto) .