The Birds and the Bees

Madame Bovary’s Ovaries: A Darwinian Look at Literature, by David P. Barash and Nanelle R. Barash (Delacorte, 272 pp., $24)

ITis 41 years now since zoologist William D. Hamilton worked out the evolutionary mathematics of kin altruism, demonstrating that even behavior that seems to belong to the moral and educational superstructure of human nature can be explained by natural selection. Sociobiology was on the march.