Aroused. The History of Hormones and How They Control Just About Everything

Metabolism, behaviour, sleep, mood swings, the immune system, fighting, fleeing, puberty and sex: these are just a few of the things our bodies control with hormones. Armed with a healthy dose of wit and curiosity, medical journalist Randi Hutter Epstein takes us on a journey through the unusual history of these potent chemicals from a basement filled with jarred nineteenth-century brains to a twenty-first-century hormone clinic in Los Angeles.

Brimming with fascinating anecdotes, illuminating new medical research and humorous details, Aroused introduces the leading scientists who made life-changing discoveries about the hormone imbalances that ail us, as well as the charlatans who used those discoveries to peddle false remedies.

Review quote

"A well-written and informative book on the history of hormone research." -- The New York Times Book Review "The field of endocrinology, as this compelling history shows, has manifested extremes of ingenuity and hubristic error." -- The New Yorker "I'm hitting up the public library for two. The first is Randi Hutter Epstein's Aroused: The history of hormones and how they control just about everything (Norton), which I hope will answer the most banal of questions as I continue my reluctant march through midlife: What the hell is happening to me?" -- Jennie Erin Smith, Summer Books 2018 - Times Literary Supplement "Congratulations to my friend @randihepstein on the publication of her book! I loved reading it and highly recommend it to anyone interested in public health or your own health!" -- Chelsea Clinton "Hormones may be ringmasters of the bodily circus, controlling everything from sex to metabolic function, but in this invigorating history they become stars of the show." -- Nature "A sweeping, glorious story of hormones, threaded through with sex, suffering, neurology, biology, medicine and self-discovery, Randi Hutter Epstein's book manages to excite the imagination as well as calm it. The story is grippingly told, and Epstein manages to bring a whole system of science alive to her reading public." -- Siddhartha Mukherjee, author of The Gene: An Intimate History "A rollicking history certain to get your intellectual and physiologic juices flowing. Adrenaline-tinged tales and hot flashes of history-just what the doctor ordered." -- Lisa Sanders, New York Times Magazine Diagnosis columnist

Randi Hutter Epstein, M.D., M.P.H., the author of Aroused and Get Me Out, is an adjunct professor at Columbia University, a lecturer at Yale University, and writer in residence at Yale Medical School. Her writing has appeared in the New York Times and the Psychology Today blog, among others. She lives in New York.