(Read more for links to full text) I missed this book when it first came out; maybe you did, too. Here's the Starred Review from Publishers Weekly: There are many things one might expect to find within the covers of a collection of essays by a Stanford professor of biology and neurology: a rich understanding of the complexities of human and animal life; a sensitivity to the relationship between our biological nature and our environmental context; a humility in the face of still-to-be-understood facets of the human condition. All these are in Sapolsky's new collection, along with something one might not expect: wry, witty prose that reads like the unexpected love child of a merger between Popular Science and GQ, written by an author who could be as much at home holding court at the local pub as he is in a university lab. In this collection (the majority of pieces ran in Discover, others in Men's Health, the New Yorker and Scientific American), Sapolsky ranges wherever his formidable curiosity leads, from genetic determinism as seen through the eyes of People magazine's "50 Most Beautiful People" to the reasons why crotchety old people are neurologically disinclined to like whatever passes for music among young people nowadays. Each essay brings its own unexpected delight, brief enough that you can dip a toe in, yet insightful enough to encourage you to pursue the topic further (and Sapolsky helpfully appends to each essay a list of suggested further readings).
The publisher offers an excerpt: Well, I have some terrible news for 99 percent of us never destined to make People's Most Beautiful issue and thus get to be featured in essay one. This news is so terrible that it's even been reified with a cover story in Newsweek. But first, a Martian joke ...
The NYT review is cited by Amazon. The reviewer, Jamie Shreeve, writes: "Nursery Crimes," the longest essay in the book, investigates the personality disorder called Munchausen's by proxy. ... In this case, where a behavioral phenomenon so utterly violates our deepest assumptions about ourselves both as humans and as animals, Sapolsky's game pursuit of the question "why" takes us to another emotional level. Most of the essays in "Monkeyluv" are engaging. This one is a masterpiece.
The above link provides the full text of the essay in the original publication venue, The Sciences, the official magazine of the New York Academy of Sciences. (You'll also find an article by Jaron Lanier in the same issue.) Powell's provides the table of contents, which identifies the title and original publication of each essay. Many of these are available online: Nature or Nurture? "The 50 Most Beautiful People in the World" Assess the Source of Their Good Looks (Discover, 2000)
A Gene for Nothing (Discover, 1997)
Genetic Hyping (The Sciences, 2000)
The Genetic War Between Men and Women (Discover, 1999)
Of Mice and (Hu)Men Genes (Natural History, 2004)
Antlers of Clay (Natural History, 2001)
Why Are Dreams Dreamlike? (Discover, 2001)
Anatomy of a Bad Mood (Men's Health, 2003)
Bonus: To Survive Stress, Keep It Brief (Washington post, 2005)
The Pleasure (and Pain) of "Maybe" (Natural History)
Stress and Your Shrinking Brain (Discover, 1999)
Bugs in the Brain (Scientific American, 2003)
Nursery Crimes (The Sciences, 1999)
How the Other Half Heals (Discover, 1998)
The Cultural Desert (Discover, 2005)
Monkeyluv (The Sciences, 1998)
Revenge Served Warm (Natural History, 2002)
Why We Want Their Bodies Back (Discover, 2002)
Open Season (The New Yorker, 1998)
Monkeyluv: And Other Essays on Our Lives as Animals |
