Take a photo of a barcode or cover
A review by rhodess
Transcendence: How Humans Evolved Through Fire, Language, Beauty, and Time by Gaia Vince
4.0
I have a very bad habit of pausing in non-fiction books like these to look up the interesting 'fun facts' that the author includes to support the whole thesis of the book, only to spend roughly 30+ minutes educating myself on them because I find them so fascinating. Vince folds in the information she's collated for her book into the main text seamlessly, inviting me to want to know more about each of them. It took me a bit of time to finish reading just from my own little researching on the side, but I still found myself coming back to the book to learn more.
Encapsulated in the pages of this book, the very unique human experiences that jumpstarted the levels of our species' evolution - both subtly and not so subtly - are laid out in a way that I never would have thought to think of. Many aspects like language, our usage of fire, how we perceive things in our environment have never been things I've stopped to ponder as to how they shaped us into who we are, but this book gave that insight in ways that were easy to consume and fascinated me. I especially loved learning about language, and how our environment can impact how different languages sound or are passed down through the generations.
Even if non-fiction isn't your bag, if you've ever been curious about how humans managed to get to this point in our evolution this book is well worth the read!
Encapsulated in the pages of this book, the very unique human experiences that jumpstarted the levels of our species' evolution - both subtly and not so subtly - are laid out in a way that I never would have thought to think of. Many aspects like language, our usage of fire, how we perceive things in our environment have never been things I've stopped to ponder as to how they shaped us into who we are, but this book gave that insight in ways that were easy to consume and fascinated me. I especially loved learning about language, and how our environment can impact how different languages sound or are passed down through the generations.
Even if non-fiction isn't your bag, if you've ever been curious about how humans managed to get to this point in our evolution this book is well worth the read!