Metab­o­lism, behav­ior, 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.

In AROUSED, Epstein expos­es the human­i­ty at the heart of hor­mone sci­ence with her rich cast of char­ac­ters, includ­ing a 1920s doc­tor pro­mot­ing vasec­tomies as a way to boost libido and a female med­ical stu­dent who dis­cov­ered a preg­nan­cy hor­mone in the 1940s. Along the way, Epstein explores the func­tions of hor­mones such as lep­tin, oxy­tocin, estro­gen, and testos­terone, demys­ti­fy­ing the sci­ence of endocrinol­o­gy. Brim­ming with fas­ci­nat­ing anec­dotes, illu­mi­nat­ing new med­ical research, and humor­ous details, AROUSED reveals how hor­mones can both push us to edge and reel us back.