**A "playful, enlightening," and "effervescent exposé" (Scientific American) on the queens of the animal kingdom *Studying zoology made Lucy Cooke feel like a sad freak. Not because she loved spiders or would root around in animal feces: all her friends shared the same curious ki...

**A "playful, enlightening," and "effervescent exposé" (Scientific American) on the queens of the animal kingdom *Studying zoology made Lucy Cooke feel like a sad freak. Not because she loved spiders or would root around in animal feces: all her friends shared the same curious kinks. The problem was her sex. Being female meant she was, by nature, a loser. Since Charles Darwin, evolutionary biologists have been convinced that the males of the animal kingdom are the interesting ones--dominating and promiscuous, while females are dull, passive, and devoted. In Bitch *, Cooke tells a new story. Whether investigating same-sex female albatross couples that raise chicks, murderous mother meerkats, or the titanic battle of the sexes waged by ducks, Cooke shows us a new evolutionary biology, one where females can be as dynamic as any male. This isn't your grandfather's evolutionary biology. It's more inclusive, truer to life, and, simply, more fun.