PositiveThe Wall Street Journal... makes important progress in the research topic for which Mr. Lieberman himself has become best known—the physiology of human running ... A few passages of Exercised suffer from excessive focus on the caloric bottom line. For living, breathing animals, the balance of energy intake and expenditure matters every bit as much as the financial balance sheet to a business. Still, reducing life’s rich pageant to metabolic inflows and outflows tends to make human existence sound as dry as an accountant’s ledger. In that vein, my favorite passage of the book concerns dancing ... For those hoping for a reason to hide in the closet during gym class, this is not your book. The science confirms many ways that physical activity is valuable to a healthy life. Nevertheless, I find Mr. Lieberman’s voice of moderation to be welcome in a world where barefoot running and paleo diets have become fads ... Instead of looking to a mythological view of our evolutionary past, we should be looking around us at a broader array of real humans, all of them moving—happily—through their lives. Getting Exercised is a start.
Richard Wrangham
PositiveThe Wall Street JournalBy giving a detailed comparison of human violence and aggression with that of our close primate relatives, Mr. Wrangham has given a possible explanation for how our species might have domesticated itself. That makes this book essential reading as geneticists start to unwrap the package of genes that responded to domestication, which may give hints about our own evolutionary history.
Peter Ward
MixedThe Wall Street JournalNo area of epigenetic research is more controversial than the idea that such [genetic] marks might be inherited across generations. In Lamarck’s Revenge, Mr. Ward grips this most controversial area of epigenetics and doesn’t let go ... Mr. Ward eloquently describes the scenario at the end of the Permian, roughly 250 million years ago: the greatest mass extinction in the history of Earth ... For Mr. Ward, every problem is a nail and epigenetics is the hammer. He lumps together genetic mechanisms like horizontal gene transfer with epigenetics, and every example of epigenetics serves as evidence for the proposition that epigenetic inheritance must matter. This leaves no room for explaining real scientific debates about how epigenetics may shape biology ... Still, even if Mr. Ward tells an imperfect and sometimes exaggerated story, this area of science is fascinating.
