June Books: Nonfiction

 Another month comes to an end. As usual, the month contained a bunch of excellent reading. I read some wonderful nonfiction, all of which was fascinating. 

Harvest: The Hidden Histories of Seven Natural Objects by Edward Posnett

Excellent and thought-provoking book.

How to Be Animal: A New History of What it Means to Be Human by Melanie Challenger

The author argues that people have forgotten that we're animals and subject to the same sorts of biological issues and responses as other animals. She looks at the repercussions of this from various angles and draws on research from anthropology, archaeology, psychology and psychiatry. At one point she looks into research on how people predictably react when they sense a threat--becoming more conservative and retreating further into their group. She comments that those in power know what the responses will be and exploit that. No arguing with that! She talked about how we have speciated culture, which I find interesting. Now that we are the only human species, instead of interacting with human species different from ourselves, we are one species, but we differentiate and separate on cultural terms. She does not mention the fact that race, while a social and cultural construct and reality, has no basis in biology. It’s something humans have made up, not something that is real in a physical sense--something that I think is important to her thesis. It was a great book. She makes some important arguments in the book. 

New month, new reading! Yay!

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