David M. Buss: The Dangerous Passion: Why jealousy is as necessary as love or sex

By MARGIE THOMSON

Shakespeare, as usual, was on to it. Beware, he said in Othello, of jealousy: "It is the green-ey'd monster which doth mock the meat it feeds on.

And who among us humans, male and female, has not felt that hot, twisting worm?" Buss argues that jealousy has a purpose in our evolution as a species: "a crystalline logic, precise purpose and supreme sensibility".

His extensive research involving thousands of subjects in many countries reveals much about the untamed demons in our lives, and his book is a lively delight.

Bloomsbury

$27.95