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The Book of Humans: A Brief History of Culture, Sex, War and the Evolution of Us by Adam Rutherford
freschne's review against another edition
informative
fast-paced
2.0
A meandering book, it was unclear to me what his point was with most of what he was saying, or where he was going with it. That being said, it is a bag of miscellaneous facts about many animals, sometimes humans, some of them are interesting.
maytrices's review against another edition
funny
informative
reflective
medium-paced
seclement's review against another edition
5.0
This, for me, was the no nonsense, non pretentious, and lucid version of the book Sapiens. Adam Rutherford is a very good writer and he manages to condense a lot of information into bite-sized pieces. He manages to make this book digestible but also nuanced, which is tough when you are trying to cover this much breadth. The reason I compare it to Sapiens is because that book had so much hype but really all it does is to try to tie together many of the topics in this book into a “grand theory of everything” in the style of Niall Ferguson and Jared Diamond, and it’s pretty easy to see past the pretence. What I like about this book is that Rutherford doesn’t try to tie all this together with a fake theory of everything to make his work seem more important or to make his book seem more clever. He just tells you interesting things on a wide range of topics. Most of the information wasn’t new to me, as an avid reader of popular science, but this is most definitely a book I would put out on a coffee table and also gift to people to read. It’s a fun and interesting book, and a great example of the genre. Well worth the time to read, and a good one if you just want to dip in and out, too.
uditnair24's review against another edition
5.0
I am Udit
I am Homo sapien
I am a great ape
I am simian
I am a primate
I am a mammal
I have a backbone
I am an animal
Yet I am one amongst the paragon of animals.
This book is incredibly insightful and impressive. The author tries to find answer to one of the most complex question we as humans try to understand. The question is we are so similar to our cousins and other animals yet we are so special. I mean as Darwin said with all the exalted powers,man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. We are capable of beautiful dreams and horrible nightmares. This book drives away this very important point that our culture is very much part of our biological evolution and we should not try to separate them. One of the aspect where we stand alone from other species significantly is in the cultural accumulation and transmission. I mean many animals learn but only humans can teach. We should revel in the complexity of our species and celebrate the fact that we alone are capable of understanding it.
The author admits that the complexity of this puzzle that how we reached where we are will continue to increase and i guess that's what makes it more challenging.
I am Homo sapien
I am a great ape
I am simian
I am a primate
I am a mammal
I have a backbone
I am an animal
Yet I am one amongst the paragon of animals.
This book is incredibly insightful and impressive. The author tries to find answer to one of the most complex question we as humans try to understand. The question is we are so similar to our cousins and other animals yet we are so special. I mean as Darwin said with all the exalted powers,man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin. We are capable of beautiful dreams and horrible nightmares. This book drives away this very important point that our culture is very much part of our biological evolution and we should not try to separate them. One of the aspect where we stand alone from other species significantly is in the cultural accumulation and transmission. I mean many animals learn but only humans can teach. We should revel in the complexity of our species and celebrate the fact that we alone are capable of understanding it.
The author admits that the complexity of this puzzle that how we reached where we are will continue to increase and i guess that's what makes it more challenging.
hades9stages's review against another edition
2.0
discovered that i literally couldn’t care less about human biological evolution or history