Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost Of Civilization (2010) - Plot & Excerpts
This was kind of neat, and was different from my usual reading choices. I learned a bit from it, and I generally liked the author's voice. It gets into a wee bit too much detail at times, but that's not a bit deal. Wells looks at human development since the dawn of agriculture rather than being hunter-gatherers. It's kind of cool - the lenses through which he looks at humans included dental development and cavities, diabetes, and noise/light, etc. It's pretty cool. I really enjoyed this book. Especially the center chapters where he was discussing the social issues that came from the development civilization. In the chapter "Demented", his brief treatment of mental illness was one of the most compelling from an evolutionary perspective that I have read, in that it stripped the need to find a "point" or a "benefit" to issues like depression and anxiety, which others writing from that standpoint attempt to find. His chapters on the future I thought did not quite reach the level of the rest of the book, which is why I rated it four rather than five stars.
What do You think about Pandora's Seed: The Unforeseen Cost Of Civilization (2010)?
Good, informative, a little all-over-the-place, but thought provoking and worth the read.
—bobby
There is hope :) but really we are doomed. May be we will last for couple millennia.
—alden
I wasn't that interested in the subjectt matter to wade through the book.
—Kiathua
nice mix of Evolution, Genetics and Climatology.
—Goody
