MixedThe New York Times Book ReviewOne could imagine a shorter work, more focused on documenting the state-of-the-art evidence about gender differences in brain imaging. Instead the book spends most of its time in the realm of developmental psychology, or social science in general. Many of these experiments are quite interesting ... it isn’t clear how the research relates to the \'new neuroscience\' of Rippon’s subtitle, nor does it reveal much about gender ... Rippon is on even shakier ground in discussing, for example, differences in self-esteem between men and women, where social science convincingly demonstrates that differences exist but brain science so far has little to offer. And the segment of the book on discrimination in science was interesting from where I sit as a female academic, but didn’t seem central to Rippon’s insights or aims ... Where the book really shines — not surprisingly — is in the details about the science of the brain: what we know and what we do not. Rippon’s explanation of how we’ve studied the brain in the past, and how recent technological advances are giving us increasingly precise tools to do so, is endlessly interesting. But in the end, the discussion of how all of this relates to gender plays a bit of a second fiddle. Of course, if Rippon’s ultimate claim is simply that men’s and women’s brains are not so different after all, then perhaps that is as it should be.
