The Mammal in the Mirror: Understanding Our Place in the Natural World

by David Philip Barash

Covers DNA, cell structure, viruses, the brain, reproduction, nutrition, ecology, and evolution

384 pages, Hardcover

First published October 1, 1999

About the author

David P. Barash is a Professor of Psychology at the University of Washington, and is notable for books on Human aggression, Peace Studies, and the sexual behavior of animals and people. He has written approximately 30 books in total. He received his bachelor's degree in biology from Harpur College, Binghamton University, and a Ph.D. in zoology from University of Wisconsin–Madison in 1970. He taught at the State University of New York at Oneonta, and then accepted a permanent position at the University of Washington.

His book Natural Selections: selfish altruists, honest liars and other realities of evolution is based on articles in the Chronicle of Higher Education and published in 2007 by Bellevue Literary Press. Immediately before that was Madame Bovary's Ovaries: a Darwinian look at literature, a popular but serious presentation of Darwinian literary criticism, jointly written with his daughter, Nanelle Rose Barash. He has also written over 230 scholarly articles and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, along with many other honors.

In 2008, a second edition of the textbook Peace and Conflict Studies co-authored with Charles P. Webel was published by Sage. In 2009, Columbia University Press published How Women Got Their Curves and Other Just-So Stories, a book on sex differentiation co-authored with Judith Eve Lipton. This was followed in 2010 by Strange Bedfellows: the surprising connection between sex, evolution and monogamy published by Bellevue Literary Press, and, in 2011, Payback: why we retaliate, redirect aggression and seek revenge, coauthored with Judith Eve Lipton and published by Oxford University Press. His book Homo Mysterious: Evolutionary puzzles of human nature appeared in 2012, also published by Oxford University Press, and in 2013, Sage published the 3rd edition of his text, Peace and Conflict Studies.

Reviews

[Shane McNerney · Rating 1 out of 5]

The title of this book really intrigued me because I absolutely love everything about mammalian evolution and behavior. I think this book was full of pertinent information, but it was explained in such a boring, uninteresting way. There's hundreds of pages that just read like it's a medical textbook, rather than a fun, introspective look at our fellow mammals and how we fit in to the overall ecosystem. Also, Barash incontrovertibly states that humans are not monogamous. Yes, monogamy is rare among our fellow mammals and the rest of the animal kingdom, but I think it's dangerous to ignore the exceptional skill of Homo Sapiens: Vagary. Humans are equipped with the special ability to adapt accordingly to their respective surroundings and culture's idiosyncrasies, making us extremely unpredictable. In some observed human societies, contemporary and historical, polygamy is more relevant than monogamy and vice versa. The jury is still somewhat out on whether humans are monogamous or not, and while the evidence points to the contrary, it's inappropriate to definitively come to a conclusion about such a nuanced topic.

With all that said, there are, towards the end, some very interesting (and horrifying) examples of how human beings wreak havoc on the environment. I was particularly fascinated by the idea of the "Revenge of the Rainforest", meaning that things like HIV become present in our lives as nature's way of avenging the destruction we've caused on our planet. Also, this is the second time I've seen the study about how the overwhelming majority of males on a college campus will gladly agree to have sex with a female stranger if asked, while the opposite is true for females when the roles are reversed. Stereotypes exist for a reason I guess, huh? Overall, this book may be more digestible and comprehensible for someone with more of an educational background in human biology, but not so much for the average reader.

[Denise · Rating 3 out of 5]

Little bit of everything.