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Rating: 
Summary: Good lord . . .
Review: This book is interesting and Small has a number of good ideas on the topic. She has a good writing style which, though at times becomes a little too unprofessional for a scholar, is nevertheless easily readable and understandable. I have no quarrel with her message, granted I don't know enough about the topic to form a logical rebuttal. She puts forth her arguments clearly, and that I have no problems with.But the grammatical and spelling mistakes that ABOUND through her book are inexcusable and the reason I give it three stars. Her mistakes are those you'd expect to see in a paper by a high school student. She uses "it's" rather than "its" (page 120), uses an apostrophe for pluralization (page 130), forgets commas (pages 155 and 156), forgets an apostrophe (page 201) and has subject-verb disagreements in number (pages 2 and 156). Aside from that, she commits spelling atrocities that would have been caught with any spell-check or careful reading: "matruing" (page 60), "menarchy" (page 65), "mht" (presumably for "might," page 124), "twenth-three" (page 141), "squeeking" (page 155) and "renown" (instead of "renowned", page 192). As a student at her University (Cornell), it was mortifying to read it, knowing that not only did she not bother to do a simple spell-check, but that Cornell didn't either when they published it. Frankly, I expect more from an Ivy League university and the faculty whom it has chosen to employ. Even more ironic is that Cornell prides itself (and was nationally recognized last fall) for its emphasis on writing. I shudder to think how many red marks would be on a Meredith Small paper were she to turn one into a freshman writing seminar.
Rating: 
Summary: An Interesting Story
Review: This is an interesting look at mating habits among non-human primates. Most of the theories and bald statements Small makes sound rather unfounded and I would like the opportunity to talk with her about them since she may mean something entirely different than my interpretation of what she's saying. In any event, she doesn't arrive at a theory that makes any sense (to me) until about page 178 which is pretty much at the end of the book. I enjoyed reading the book nonetheless.
Rating:
Summary: An Interesting Story
Review: This is an interesting look at mating habits among non-human primates. Most of the theories and bald statements Small makes sound rather unfounded and I would like the opportunity to talk with her about them since she may mean something entirely different than my interpretation of what she's saying. In any event, she doesn't arrive at a theory that makes any sense (to me) until about page 178 which is pretty much at the end of the book. I enjoyed reading the book nonetheless.
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