Why Men Die First: How to Lengthen Your Lifespan

Legato, a physician and one of the founders of gender specific medicine, provides a broad-brush look at the relative fragility of men who ""at every point of their lives die an average of seven years earlier than women."" Much of the book will be familiar to anyone who read John Gray's Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus (or, indeed, Legato's own Why Men Never Remember and Women Never Forget), emphasizing the debatable notions that men and boys are aggressive where most women are team players, and that women value ""the ambiance of the workplace and their relationship with other workers"" over attaining power within a corporate structure. She breaks newer ground when she examines the genetics; the Y chromosome, she contends, may be more vulnerable to mutation, leading her to ponder whether ""men have a future,"" or might disappear in 125,000 years (on the other hand, it may be that ""the Y drives evolution""). Later chapters look at depression, diseases, sports and work as they relate to men. Though a well-sourced overview, Legato's attempt to give readers a ""new view of men"" suffers from a lack of fresh perspective.