A review by ekalthaus
The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall

3.0

A very pleasant book about the centrality of story to the human experience. I found particularly interesting the discussion of the possible evolutionary benefits of story. Much of the content was not particularly surprising - I think everyone is aware of the unreliability and self-serving nature of memory, and our tendency to make ourselves protagonist is pretty obvious. Also, I read this book after hearing the author interviewed on NPR - and I'm afraid the book didn't add very much to what I heard in the interview. Pleasant read with interesting ideas, but nothing that will blow your mind or make you think about things in a particularly new way.