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The Evolution of Childhood: Relationships, Emotion, Mind |  | Author: Melvin Konner
Publisher: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press
Category: Book
List Price: $39.95
Buy New: $26.35
as of 9/4/2010 07:41 CDT details
You Save: $13.60 (34%)
New (29) Used (9) from $26.35
Seller: supermoviedeals
Rating:  4 reviews
Sales Rank: 46640
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 960
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 3.1
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.5 x 2.3
ISBN: 0674045661
Dewey Decimal Number: 305.231
EAN: 9780674045668
ASIN: 0674045661
Publication Date: May 31, 2010
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
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| • | ISBN13: 9780674045668 | | • | Condition: New | | • | Notes: BUY WITH CONFIDENCE, Over one million books sold! 98% Positive feedback. Compare our books, prices and service to the competition. 100% Satisfaction Guaranteed |
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Product Description
This book is an intellectual tour de force: a comprehensive Darwinian interpretation of human development. Looking at the entire range of human evolutionary history, Melvin Konner tells the compelling and complex story of how cross-cultural and universal characteristics of our growth from infancy to adolescence became rooted in genetically inherited characteristics of the human brain. All study of our evolution starts with one simple truth: human beings take an extraordinarily long time to grow up. What does this extended period of dependency have to do with human brain growth and social interactions? And why is play a sign of cognitive complexity, and a spur for cultural evolution? As Konner explores these questions, and topics ranging from bipedal walking to incest taboos, he firmly lays the foundations of psychology in biology. As his book eloquently explains, human learning and the greatest human intellectual accomplishments are rooted in our inherited capacity for attachments to each other. In our love of those we learn from, we find our way as individuals and as a species. Never before has this intersection of the biology and psychology of childhood been so brilliantly described. "Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution," wrote Dobzhansky. In this remarkable book, Melvin Konner shows that nothing in childhood makes sense except in the light of evolution. (20100415)
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| Customer Reviews:
 Groundbreaking Standard Work June 15, 2010
Hans-Martin Hueppi (Zuerich)
10 out of 11 found this review helpful
Melvin Konner's "The Evolution of Childhood" is a comprehensive research report in the field of evolutionary oriented developmental psychology, biology, anthropology and neurobiology. It is a groundbreaking book and will establish itself as a standard work. Clear, concise and exciting, even for non specialized readers (the reviewer is a German speaking psycholinguist and had his professional training in the sixties.) Thanks to its excellent apparatus, it provides insight into many areas, e.g. psycholinguistics, sexual development (including homosexuality), or the issues of adoption and many more.
The definitive work on infant and childhood development. August 13, 2010
J. Hunt (Oregon)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Emory professor/researcher Melvin Konner, who holds an M.D. and a Ph.D., took 30 years to prepare this comprehensive overview of infancy and childhood - and it shows. Extraordinarily thorough and engagingly written, The Evolution of Childhood is the definitive work on this critically important subject. It is sure to be an immensely useful resource for professionals as well as a fascinating read for the general public.
Jan Hunt, M.Sc., author of The Natural Child: Parenting from the Heart and A Gift for Baby - Un Regalo Para Bebe; co-editor of The Unschooling Unmanual.
Worth the effort August 16, 2010
Vernon (Chicago)
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
Having no formal science background, this book was quite a challenge but well worth the effort. I've read many books on brain science, psychology and human development since my wife was pregnant with our first child. This is one of very few that has no ax to grind. It is a detailed accounting of the major research in human development which has left me humbled by the precariousness of human life and thankful for the luxury of raising children in the twenty first century. I highly recommend.
 Ponderous Academic Prose June 14, 2010
J. Savani (Santa Barbara, CA USA)
8 out of 25 found this review helpful
However excellent and insightful the ideas, the prose is too turgid to enable ready access for readers who are not professional academics. And not only professional academics, but professional in the fields of inquiry (especially evolutionary psychology and anthropology), which are the topical areas of the book. This is not a science book construed for a general well-educated and curious audience, but a textbook. It is not often that a book disappoints me as much as this one did because I really wanted to think about the ideas in this book. I was not only impeded by the prose style from "entertaining" those ideas, but so distracted by the style that I kept thinking about the medium instead of the message. So I was thoroughly discouraged and frustrated. A most unpleasant reading experience.
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