His writing is witty, crammed with pop-culture references, and he employs examples and analogies that make his arguments seem like common sense rather than the hard-earned scientific insights they really are.

Uses science to unsettle our most embedded assumptions. It is deeply thought-provoking.

This is the kind of fact that brightens any dinner party, and Bering delivers it with exuberance. His style is heavy on rhetorical flourishes, facetious asides and cheap puns, but it is always worth the ride.

Jesse Bering is the Hunter Thompson of science writing, and he is a delight to read - funny, smart, and madly provocative

If David Sedaris were an experimental psychologist, he'd be writing essays very much like these. Bering's unique blend of scientific knowledge, sense of humor, intellectual courage, and pure literary skill is immediately recognizable; no one writes quite the way Bering does. Read this book. You'll learn, laugh, and then learn some more.

Bering has an uncanny way with words, an incisive capacity for logical thinking, and a stunning talent for breathing new life and enthusiasm into science.

Jesse Bering is the intellectual spawn of Helen Fisher and Oliver Sacks, and Why Is the Penis Shaped Like That? is brainy, informative, compassionate - and hilariously naughty.

Jay Griffiths is one of our most poetic and passionate critics of the ways of civilisation. Provocative, illuminating and shamelessly romantic

a great book...if you need to be reminded that there is value to be discovered in experiences when they seem nothing but pointless and painful, and choices to be made when you think you have none, I'd recommend it

Captivating...fascinating...His answer to the questions “Nature or nurture?” is both. If that sounds like a hedge, it isn’t: instead, it’s a testament to the author’s close attention to nuance.

Intelligently, rigorously and politely debunks the "10,000 hours" myth

Perhaps the most fascinating book of the year... Absorbing and full of fascinating detail

This subtle, enthralling study by the Sports Illustrated writer avoids making excessive claims for genetics

David Epstein's The Sports Gene has a discussion that badly needs to happen at all levels in sport; about the relationships between talent, genetics, practice and success in sport

Respect is due to Epstein…for injecting some objectivity into the debate with his gripping new tome

The Sports Gene offers a fascinating insight into the topic of nature v nurture…a great read

A welcome corrective to those who have deliberately underplayed the notion that genetic makeup is relevant

An illuminating read

Fascinating

Well written and contains important research, and has some wonderful anecdotes

The most intriguing sports books of the year, and possibly the best-researched

An enjoyable mixture of easily digestible science, anecdote and argument

This is a book to counter the 10,000-hour rule popularised by Malcolm Gladwell

In a book packed with fascinating anecdotes, it’s hard to pick out highlights … If sport is a passion, The Sports Gene is required reading

Highly entertaining and enlightening

The Sports Gene does not try to simplify the nature vs nurture argument, but it does provide a welcome corrective to those who have underplayed the notion that genetic make-up is relevant

Epstein explores this territory with canny verve

Interesting reading

Dazzling and illuminating

Epstein is too respectful of the complexity of his subject matter to leap to any grand conclusions. The book was conceived partially as a rebuttal to glib theorising, and it is all the more fascinating as a result

Fascinating from start to finish

Epstein forces us to rethink the very nature of athleticism

Looks at the science of extraordinary athletic performance.

Captivating… Dazzling and illuminating

Epstein is not afraid to follow science in “trekking deep into the bramble patches of sensitive topics like gender and race"

Captivating… In a particularly fascinating chapter, Epstein investigates an old theory that purports to explain why Jamaica produces so many Olympic sprinters