A review by leslie115
The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human by Jonathan Gottschall

4.0

I like how Gottschall ties together disparate fields (e.g., psychology, evolution, gaming) to explain how integral storytelling is to being human. I didn't take many notes, but the book reminded me of these two ideas: (1) people learn things better when they are conveyed in a story (but I'm not sure Gottschall actually explains why) and (2) people remember stories in such a way to make them look good. The last chapter also does a very nice job of speculating about the future of storytelling (from MMORPG to holodeck?) and making recommendations to ensure that our love of storytelling (like sugar) doesn't cause our demise.