A sometimes-opaque but frequently engaging study.
Engineer Mrejeru presents a collection of scientific inquiries into the ongoing development of humankind.
Human evolution is the subject of this series of articles, originally published online. The first, “Making of the Speakingman,” from which the book gets part of its title, examines “two distinct stages” of the organization of the human brain and argues that it evolved due to “climate and geomagnetic” factors. The result was functional advancements brought on by bipedalism’s effect on neurological development, he says, which yielded the ability to manipulate fire. The book’s second part examines ancient human migration, exploring what caused prehistoric people to leave Africa. The answer, Mrejeru posits, lies with environmental factors as well as “neurogenesis bursts” that allowed for higher adaptability to new locations. The article also asserts that people ventured west from Africa into the Americas but left no lasting settlements. The result of all of these influences and changes is the emergence of a being whom the author calls “Homo loquens (the speakingman),” who, crucially, has the power to speak and understand speech. A later portion looks to the future, examining what it means for the continued development of Homo sapiensthat people have become more individualistic and less dependent on communities. Overall, these articles can often be dense for the lay reader; topics such as how “the ambient space in which are embedded more complex grammars,” for instance, can be tough going. The book also cites many academic papers that exhibit similarly complex academic language. Yet, for readers willing to dig further into the content, the book has numerous points of evolutionary intrigue that tackle fascinating questions: How did humans begin using fire? Is schizophrenia a “by-product of the complex evolution of the human brain”? What does it mean for the world at large that the “self-interested individual has difficulties taking collective action”? A careful reading provides much to think about from prehistory and beyond.
A sometimes-opaque but frequently engaging study.Pub Date: Oct. 24, 2023
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 319
Publisher: Self
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2023
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.
Greed, depravity, and serial murder in 1920s Oklahoma.
During that time, enrolled members of the Osage Indian nation were among the wealthiest people per capita in the world. The rich oil fields beneath their reservation brought millions of dollars into the tribe annually, distributed to tribal members holding "headrights" that could not be bought or sold but only inherited. This vast wealth attracted the attention of unscrupulous whites who found ways to divert it to themselves by marrying Osage women or by having Osage declared legally incompetent so the whites could fleece them through the administration of their estates. For some, however, these deceptive tactics were not enough, and a plague of violent death—by shooting, poison, orchestrated automobile accident, and bombing—began to decimate the Osage in what they came to call the "Reign of Terror." Corrupt and incompetent law enforcement and judicial systems ensured that the perpetrators were never found or punished until the young J. Edgar Hoover saw cracking these cases as a means of burnishing the reputation of the newly professionalized FBI. Bestselling New Yorkerstaff writer Grann (The Devil and Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness, and Obsession, 2010, etc.) follows Special Agent Tom White and his assistants as they track the killers of one extended Osage family through a closed local culture of greed, bigotry, and lies in pursuit of protection for the survivors and justice for the dead. But he doesn't stop there; relying almost entirely on primary and unpublished sources, the author goes on to expose a web of conspiracy and corruption that extended far wider than even the FBI ever suspected. This page-turner surges forward with the pacing of a true-crime thriller, elevated by Grann's crisp and evocative prose and enhanced by dozens of period photographs.
Dogged original research and superb narrative skills come together in this gripping account of pitiless evil.Pub Date: April 18, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-385-53424-6
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Feb. 1, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
For Howard Zinn, long-time civil rights and anti-war activist, history and ideology have a lot in common. Since he thinks that everything is in someone's interest, the historian—Zinn posits—has to figure out whose interests he or she is defining/defending/reconstructing (hence one of his previous books, The Politics of History). Zinn has no doubts about where he stands in this "people's history": "it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people's movements of resistance." So what we get here, instead of the usual survey of wars, presidents, and institutions, is a survey of the usual rebellions, strikes, and protest movements. Zinn starts out by depicting the arrival of Columbus in North America from the standpoint of the Indians (which amounts to their standpoint as constructed from the observations of the Europeans); and, after easily establishing the cultural disharmony that ensued, he goes on to the importation of slaves into the colonies. Add the laborers and indentured servants that followed, plus women and later immigrants, and you have Zinn's amorphous constituency. To hear Zinn tell it, all anyone did in America at any time was to oppress or be oppressed; and so he obscures as much as his hated mainstream historical foes do—only in Zinn's case there is that absurd presumption that virtually everything that came to pass was the work of ruling-class planning: this amounts to one great indictment for conspiracy. Despite surface similarities, this is not a social history, since we get no sense of the fabric of life. Instead of negating the one-sided histories he detests, Zinn has merely reversed the image; the distortion remains.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1979
ISBN: 0061965588
Page Count: 772
Publisher: Harper & Row
Review Posted Online: May 26, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1979
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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