Final Review: The Essential Difference

I finally finished "The Essential Difference," previously helf-reviewed in my August 11 entry.

The section that described how levels of testosterone can affect the systemizing/empathizing abilities in your life was a little scary (and definitely interesting). However, he noted that other hormones may affect your abilities as well, but deflected that topic as a topic "for another book." Well, no! He can't do that! If he titled his book, "The Effect of Testosterone on...," then maybe, but we're trying to get to the bottom of this and he bails out.

What makes the second part more interesting than the first is that he provides more case studies of specific people and talks more about their behavior and how it exemplifies different degrees of autism. He also ponders, if autism is extreme-main-brainedness, then what would be the extreme female-brainedness? He postulates the evolutionary advantages of being variously balanced in systemizing or empathizing. All this is just interesting enough for me to keep the book. Just barely.