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Unnatural Selection

Choosing Boys Over Girls and the Consequences of a World Full of Men

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Unnatural Selection

By: Mara Hvistendahl
Narrated by: Tamara Marston
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About this listen

Lianyungang, a booming port city, has China's most extreme gender ratio for children under four: 163 boys for every 100 girls. These numbers don't seem terribly grim, but in 10 years, the skewed sex ratio will pose a colossal challenge. By the time these children reach adulthood, their generation will have 24 million more men than women. The prognosis for China's neighbors is no less bleak: Asia now has 163 million females "missing" from its population. Gender imbalance reaches far beyond Asia, affecting Georgia, Eastern Europe, and cities in the U.S. where there are significant immigrant populations. The world, therefore, is becoming increasingly male, and this mismatch is likely to create profound social upheaval.

Historically, eras in which there have been an excess of men have produced periods of violent conflict and instability. Mara Hvistendahl has written a stunning, impeccably researched book that does not flinch from examining not only the consequences of the misbegotten policies of sex selection but Western complicity with them.

©2011 Mara Hvistendahl (P)2011 Audible, Inc. Gender Studies Social Sciences China Imperial Japan Social justice

Critic Reviews

"A hard-hitting, eye-opening study that not only paints a dire future of a world without girls but traces the West's role in propagating sex selection." (Kirkus Reviews)
"Yes, it's a rigorous exploration of the world's 'missing women,' but it's more than that too: an extraordinarily vivid look at the implications of the problem." (Stephen J. Dubner, author of Freakonomics and SuperFreakonomics)
"Tamara Marston’s soothing alto delivers the facts and figures with clarity and precision. She is always calm, even when Hvistendah may not be. Her pace is measured, and her pronunciation is excellent." (Audiofile)
All stars
Most relevant  
This poorly written, biased and extremely unbalanced book turns a very interesting topic into a tedious slog to get through. For some strange reason this author avoids the most important, real and most interesting issues and instead bends over backwards to waste hours on boring, tenuous links that are of little relevance.

Such a disappointing book

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