Susan P. Mattern is Distinguished Research Professor of History at the University of Georgia. Her many books include The Prince of Medicine: Galen in the Roman Empire and Rome and the Enemy. She lives on a farm in Winterville, Georgia.

"Susan Mattern’s scholarly and interpretive skills make this remarkable book recommended reading for evolutionary and cultural anthropologists as well as other historians, philosophers, and other scientists."---Kristen Hawkes, Evolutionary Studies in Imaginative Culture --- "The Slow Moon Climbs is much more than a history of how menopause came to be understood as ‘hormonal chaos’. It is a sustained argument about the nature of humanity and the way our societies are structured, a far-reaching account of menopause’s significance in human evolution."---Katherine Foxhall, History Today --- "The Slow Moon Climbs is a deeply satisfying book. . . . It tells the reader that women reach their most important roles later in life. It insists that what makes women special is not their sexuality, but who they are independent of their sexuality. And it invites them to understand that the social world they chose shapes the bodies they experience. Grandmothers rule."---T. M. Luhrmann, Times Literary Supplement --- "A brilliantly wide-ranging study of the menopause across the centuries . . . Mattern’s remarkable book fits perfectly into this cultural moment."---Emma Rees, Times Higher Education --- "The Slow Moon Climbs: The Science, History and Meaning of Menopause, surely could not have been published 50 or even 20 years ago."---Anne-Marie Slaughter, Financial Times --- "Mattern’s book . . . makes a strong argument for embracing the menopause and treating its symptoms singly rather than bundling it into this female syndrome."---Kate Spicer, The Telegraph --- "By viewing [menopause] through the lenses of anthropology, evolutionary psychology, sociology, medicine and culture, Mattern describes how our understanding of this biological rite of passage has itself evolved. [The Slow Moon Climbs] is also a polemic, a plea to reject the medicalisation of menopause and its language of loss and deficiency. All of this makes it a refreshing and scholarly change from the mostly folksy, self-help offerings in this genre."---Anjana Ahuja, Financial Times --- "By historicizing menopause the syndrome and showing how the long lives of post-menopausal women may have been a crucial factor in the success of our species, Mattern offers a counternarrative to the harridans and hags of our cultural consciousness."---Anna Reser, Lady Science --- "That menopause may enable a new role and stature for women is the central argument of The Slow Moon Climbs . . . . Mattern sees [menopause] as an opening-up."---Liza Mundy, The Atlantic --- "A celebration of menopause as a life stage vital to our species' survival, but one that has now been trivialized as a disease to be treated. . . . A wise history of a subject that is 'deeply . . . implicated in the human condition.'" --- "Winner of the PROSE Award in History of Science, Medicine, and Technology, Association of American Publishers"