Details

ISBN-10: 1324050535
ISBN-13: 9781324050537
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Publish Date: 03/07/2023
Dimensions: 8.25" L, 5.54" W, 0.81" H

Vagina Obscura: An Anatomical Voyage

Paperback

Price: $17.95

Overview

A camera obscura reflects the world back but dimmer and inverted. Similarly, science has long viewed woman through a warped lens, one focused narrowly on her capacity for reproduction. As a result, there exists a vast knowledge gap when it comes to what we know about half of the bodies on the planet.

That is finally changing. Today, a new generation of researchers is turning its gaze to the organs traditionally bound up in baby-making–the uterus, ovaries, and vagina–and illuminating them as part of a dynamic, resilient, and ever-changing whole. Welcome to Vagina Obscura, an odyssey into a woman’s body from a fresh perspective, ushering in a whole new cast of characters.

In Boston, a pair of biologists are growing artificial ovaries to counter the cascading health effects of menopause. In Melbourne, a urologist remaps the clitoris to fill in crucial gaps in female sexual anatomy. Given unparalleled access to labs and the latest research, journalist Rachel E. Gross takes readers on a scientific journey to the center of a wonderous world where the uterus regrows itself, ovaries pump out fresh eggs, and the clitoris pulses beneath the surface like a shimmering pyramid of nerves.

This paradigm shift is made possible by the growing understanding that sex and gender are not binary; we all share the same universal body plan and origin in the womb. That’s why insights into the vaginal microbiome, ovarian stem cells, and the biology of menstruation don’t mean only a better understanding of female bodies, but a better understanding of male, non-binary, transgender, and intersex bodies–in other words, all bodies.

By turns funny, lyrical, incisive, and shocking, Vagina Obscura is a powerful testament to how the landscape of human knowledge can be rewritten to better serve everyone.

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Reviews
Through her seamless storytelling and meticulous research, Rachel Gross shows how long we have misunderstood the bodies of half the people who have ever lived, how much we still have to learn, and how wondrous and rewarding that quest can be. Vagina Obscura is science writing at its finest–revelatory, wry, consequential, necessary, and incredibly hard to put down.–Ed Yong, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and author of I Contain Multitudes
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Details

ISBN-10: 1324050535
ISBN-13: 9781324050537
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
Publish Date: 03/07/2023
Dimensions: 8.25" L, 5.54" W, 0.81" H
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