Product Description
Why are women more verbal than men? Why do women remember details of fights that men can’t remember at all? Why do women tend to form deeper bonds with their female friends than men do with their male counterparts? These and other questions have stumped both sexes throughout the ages.

Now, pioneering neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine, M.D., brings together the latest findings to show how the unique structure of the female brain determines how women think, what they value, how they communicate, and who they love. While doing research as a medical student at Yale and then as a resident and faculty member at Harvard, Louann Brizendine discovered that almost all of the clinical data in existence on neurology, psychology, and neurobiology focused exclusively on males. In response to the overwhelming need for information on the female mind, Brizendine established the first clinic in the country to study and treat women’s brain function.

In The Female Brain, Dr. Brizendine distills all her findings and the latest information from the scientific community in a highly accessible book that educates women about their unique brain/body/behavior.

The result: women will come away from this book knowing that they have a lean, mean, communicating machine. Men will develop a serious case of brain envy.

CUSTOMER REVIEWS (Average Customer Rating: 4.0 based on 133 reviews)

A tribute to misandry (hatred of men) by Ted Howard

1 Stars
June 18, 2009
I couldn't get far in this book. Her publishers, editors, and agents must have been women. No man in the business could read this and not point out that her tone destroys half of her potential customer market. Every time a gender difference was pointed out, it was universally in favor of women. Men are depicted as sex-crazed, overly-aggressive, under-developed emotionally, intellectually inferior, and stunted in general. Science is distorted not only by bias but also by the omission of any differences that would portray men as superior in any way.
I felt better about the book when I read "It is my hope that this book will benefit many more women and girls that I can personally reach in the clinic." At least the author recognizes that she doesn't care if a man ever reads her book.
I almost gave this book more stars, thinking that maybe women and girls could benefit from the science of the book. I don't see how anyone can benefit from such a blatantly biased presentation of science.
It's a shame because it could have been a great book. I was looking forward to reading it.

All women should read this book! CHANGED MY LIFE by hope this helps

5 Stars
June 02, 2009
With every page, I was like "Yes!...Yes!!... Yes!!!" The author explained the reasons for all of the thoughts and actions I've experienced my whole life. Now instead of thinking I'm crazy or too sensitive, I understand that I am a normal female. And females' brains are saturated with hormones. That's why I feel like I'm on a roller coaster every month... I feel like I've got it all under control and figured out one week, and then the next week it all falls apart. Now that I know it's chemical, I just try to ignore myself as much as possible and hold on until that sweet wave of estrogen rolls in to put out the emotional fire the progesterone ignited. This intimate knowledge of how my brain works in combination with the help of our sweet and precious Lord has helped me go from spazzed out self-help book junkie to just a normal girl trying to make the best of life in the body she was given. I have given this book to dear friends as a gift in the hopes that it will have as positive an impact on them as it had on me. I hope it will enrich your life too.

Interesting book..... by John A. Kane

4 Stars
May 14, 2009
I've only just begun to read this book but it comes highly reccommended and seems preety interesting so far.

A Brilliant Achievement by Jiang Xueqin (Toronto, Canada)

5 Stars
April 09, 2009
"The Female Brain" is a concise and pithy, nuanced and profound exploration of why and how women think and behave by a brilliant and experienced neuropsychiatrist. In 183 pages Dr. Louann Brizendine, founder of the Women's and Teen Girls' Mood and Hormone Clinic in California, distills and refines decades of scientific and clinical research and demonstrates lucidly and powerfully that who we are at this particular moment is determined by a certain proportion of certain chemicals in our brains. All humans have estrogen and testosterone, and it is the proportion of the two that determines our gender and behavior.

"The Female Brain" will radically change how educators, parents, and just about everyone else perceive women and the world. Consider Dr. Brizendine's discussion on how girls and boys learn differently in the classroom. Girls are wired to respond to faces and emotions while boys respond to numbers and objects. So while girls are obsessed with pleasing the teacher, boys are obsessed with sports and video games. And that explains why girls fare so better in school than the boys. However, Dr. Brizendine also points out that if schools are biased towards girls the scientific community -- with its emphasis on competition, awards, and statistics -- is greatly biased towards men (So Larry Summers is right although not in the way he imagined it). It's this kind of objective pursuit of facts, information, and the truth that make Dr. Brizendine the world's best neuropsychiatrist, and makes "The Female Brain" such a compelling and informative read.

In her book Dr. Brizendine takes us on a succinct tour of what it means to be a woman. Young girls tend to be sympathetic and emotive, and thus a pleasure to rear and to teach. But as they become teenagers their hormones undergo a tremendous flux, and their priority changes from pleasing their parents and teachers to pleasing other girls in school. Dr. Brizendine explains that that's because the human brain was primarily designed for a hunter-gatherer society, with women as the gatherers. Men could go and hunt animals, and the stronger, more competitive, and more aggressive among them usually returned with the boar. But women, because they both had to rear a child and gather fruits and nuts, needed to co-operate with each other, and that meant avoiding conflict and communicating often. Men are excited by competition and conflict, and women are stressed by it.

Women's primary responsibility is to give birth to and rear children. To accomplish this women will seek a wealthy husband although after marriage women will tend to cheat with men who they find physically attractive. That from an evolutionary biology perspective is what's most logical: women need to find a long-term mate who can provide comfort and security but they're also looking for the best genes for their child. Once women have children they become obsessed over their children, an obsession that is re-inforced and cemented by constant physical contact with their children. However, once the children leave home, women completely change. They become more independent and assertive, and seek out to carve their own individual space. Men who are in their mid-fifties who have grown accustomed to and dependent on a supportive wife are shocked to suddenly discover their wife distant and cold, Dr. Brizendine writes, and it's their failure to accept what's natural that explains why divorce rates among mature couples are so common and why the majority of such divorces are initiated by the wife.

Nothing that Dr. Brizendine writes is shocking and new, and that's mainly because every aspect of women's lives have been explored endlessly. Most of this exploration tends to be self-serving, political, and emotional. But Dr. Brizendine gives us a scientific context and a frame to best understand how and why women think and behave the way they do. She argues quite conclusively and powerfully that brain chemicals heavily influence our thinking and behavior. For example, greater testosterone can account for greater sexuality activity among young girls and what we may consider to be life-threatening depression may just be a minor chemical imbalance that can be relieved with the right medication and monitoring.

Those reading the book can find Dr. Brizendine's arguments and conclusions threatening and abject. Doesn't this mean that we have no control over our destiny? Doesn't this mean that the gender divide is just natural and immutable? Doesn't this mean that drugs can control our minds?

"My intentions for this book were to help women through the various shifts in their lives: shifts so big they actually create changes in a woman's perception of reality, her values, and what she pays attention to," Dr. Brizendine writes in the epilogue. "If we can understand how our lives are shaped by our brain chemistry, then maybe we can better see the road ahead."

In other words coming to terms with how evolution has wired women's brains is the first necessary step to closing the gender divide and granting women control over their destiny. It may take decades for "The Female Brain" to impact schooling and parenting, culture and society but the book -- because it is so honest and truthful, fair and clear -- will impact. With "The Female Brain" Dr. Louann Brizendine has made a tremendous contribution to the future of humanity.

Very disappointing in all areas by Dr. Susan L. Clarke (Saint Paul)

1 Stars
April 06, 2009
I was so looking forward to this book. Finally there was a definitive book on the structural differences between female and male brains - quite true. I wanted a popular book which I could use when giving talks on Brain injury and treatment.

However, Brizendine's book is not that useful, or even that accurate. For instance, on page 33 in the paperback edition, she has a diagram on the estrogen/ progesterone wave. On that same diagram, she has a vertical line signifying ovulation. I cannot conceive, that as a specialist in womens hormones, she has not read the research from Canada (Peterson et al, Fertility and Sterility, July 2003) where the researchers (by mistake) discovered that hormonal levels have little correlation to ovulatory activity, and that some women ovulate multiple times during the month.

The book is filled with similar inaccuracies, plus most of her information is presented in anecdotal form with examples from her client base. Now if you know that she charges, in her clinic, $180 per consult, then you will gather that her clients have a certain amount of disposable income, which means they are likely to be middle-class and presumably well-educated. You cannot make scientific assertions about a whole class of humanity just by looking at members of a particular class.

As a medical professional, when I read a book in my field, I expect to, and need to be able to discover what finding refers to what piece of research. In Brizendine's book, this is impossible. Dr. Brizendine neglected to either footnote or add any sort of tracking system.

In my personal this book does more harm than good - what were the editors thinking of when they passed it?

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