Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That?

Jesse Bering is the Hunter Thompson of science writing, and he is a delight to read - funny, smart, and madly provocative

Professor Paul Bloom, Yale University

If David Sedaris were an experimental psychologist, he'd be writing essays very much like these. Bering's unique blend of scientific knowledge, sense of humor, intellectual courage, and pure literary skill is immediately recognizable; no one writes quite the way Bering does. Read this book. You'll learn, laugh, and then learn some more.

Christopher Ryan, author of Sex at Dawn

His writing is witty, crammed with pop-culture references, and he employs examples and analogies that make his arguments seem like common sense rather than the hard-earned scientific insights they really are.

New Scientist

Uses science to unsettle our most embedded assumptions. It is deeply thought-provoking.

Sunday Times

This is the kind of fact that brightens any dinner party, and Bering delivers it with exuberance. His style is heavy on rhetorical flourishes, facetious asides and cheap puns, but it is always worth the ride.

Telegraph

Bering has an uncanny way with words, an incisive capacity for logical thinking, and a stunning talent for breathing new life and enthusiasm into science.

Gordon Gallup

Jesse Bering is the intellectual spawn of Helen Fisher and Oliver Sacks, and Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? is brainy, informative, compassionate - and hilariously naughty.

Amy Dickinson