Readers have likely heard this song before but perhaps not so exhaustively and well-referenced as in Lieberman’s opus. Would...
Six million years of biological evolution have produced a human body ill-adapted to the diets and lifestyles that cultural evolution has wrought since modern humans emerged. That is the core message of this massive review of where we came from and what ails us now.
Lieberman (Human Evolutionary Biology/Harvard Univ.; The Evolution of the Human Head, 2011, etc.) writes authoritatively about the fossil record, crediting bipedalism as the driver that freed hands to learn new skills, enabled foraging for diverse diets and chasing prey, and ultimately built bigger brains. In time, humans spread across the globe in hunter-gatherer groups. Thus we remained until the agricultural and industrial revolutions spurred population growth, changed diets, and introduced new infectious and chronic diseases—while little altering our hunter-gatherer anatomy and physiology. Lieberman examines energy balance—calories taken in vs. calories expended—and good shape. Analyzing today’s creature comforts, processed food (with addictive amounts of sugar, salt and fat) and lack of exercise, it is no wonder we are seeing rises in obesity and risks for heart disease, diabetes, osteoporosis and the like. Lieberman calls these diseases of “mismatch” (of biological evolution and culture) and medicine’s emphasis on treating symptoms, “dysevolution,” which means perpetuating the diseases instead of preventing them. The repeated emphasis on all the bad things humans do is wearying. By no means does Lieberman discount all the good that modern society has achieved, but that message is nearly drowned by the constant admonition to do right by your body. Alas, he is the first to admit that changing human behavior is notoriously hard. At best, he offers a “soft paternalism”—e.g., government controls of children’s environments (more physical education and better lunches) and taxing the unhealthy choices of adults.
Readers have likely heard this song before but perhaps not so exhaustively and well-referenced as in Lieberman’s opus. Would that industry and governments take heed.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-0-307-37941-2
Page Count: 480
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Aug. 3, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2013
BOOK REVIEW
There's an elegant, albeit humbling, logic to the first three books in the Science Masters Series, all coming in October. In the middle is Leakey (Origins Reconsidered, 1992, etc.) writing about, well, us. Then, lest we acquire an inflated notion of our own importance, there are the ultimate bookends of the beginning and the end of the universe: The Origin of the Universe, by John D. Barrow (Astronomy/Univ. of Sussex, England; PI in the Sky, 1992, etc.) and The Last Three Minutes, by Paul Davies (Natural Philosophy/Univ. of Adelaide, Australia; The Mind of God, 1991, etc.). The series is being published by an international consortium of 16 publishers. It's a serious, much-needed effort to bring practicing scientists in touch with the general public. Other heavyweight brainiacs lined up for the series include philosopher and cog-sci guy Daniel C. Dennett; paleontologist (and DiMaggiologist) Stephen Jay Gould; anthropologist Mary Catherine Bateson; and artificial intelligence researcher Marvin Minsky. This is good publishing. PBS, eat your heart out.
Pub Date: Oct. 26, 1994
ISBN: 0-465-03135-8
Page Count: 176
Publisher: Basic Books
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1994
IN THE NEWS
In the prehistoric days before Jurassic Park and Barney, the focus of dinosaur-mania for anyone growing up in New York City was the American Museum of Natural History, where the looming skeleton of Tyrannosaurus rex inspired awe in generations of children. Now, with the renovation and extension of its dinosaur exhibit, that venerable and much-loved institution offers a history of its paleontology department, from its creation in 1891 to the present day. Among the adventures Wallace (The Audubon Society Pocket Guide to Dinosaurs, not reviewed) recounts are those of Barnum Brown (known as ``Mr. Bones''), who discovered the museum's T. rex in Hell Creek, Mont., in 1907; Roy Chapman Andrews, whose dinosaur- hunting fields in 1922 were in the Gobi Desert, where he unearthed the giant rhinoceros Paraceratherium; to Malcolm McKenna, who returned to the Gobi in the 1990s and found the remains of the Velociraptor. No amount of cinematic magic can surpass the wonder induced by a personal encounter with the remains of these giants who once stalked the earth.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-671-86590-0
Page Count: 144
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1994
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