Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things (Hardcover)

by Laurence Gonzales (Author)
Key Phrases: training scars, cosmic cheat sheet, entropy debt, Everyday Survival, Don Juan, The Earth Is Rotting (more...)

Editorial Reviews

Review
"...[a] lively attempt to isolate the common factors that cause some people to survive and others to die." Independent on Sunday "Buy it so you know what to do if you happen to fall off a mountain." Anthony Sattin, The Sunday Times"

Product Description

The author of the life-changing bestseller Deep Survival once again brings us revelations about ourselves from the cutting edge of science. Laurence Gonzales shows how modern society has made us lazy and susceptible to previously unknown threats. "Curiosity, awareness, attention," he writes. "Those are the tools of our everyday survival...we all must be scientists at heart or be victims of forces that we don't understand."

Gonzales turns his talent for gripping narrative, knowledge of the way our minds and bodies work, and bottomless curiosity about the world to the topic of how we can best use the lessons of our evolutionary history to overcome the hazards of everyday life. He finds that natural laws profoundly affect our actions, and he reveals the hidden causes and costs of our behavior, whether as individuals or as a species whose decisions may be leading to darker times. Whether you are climbing a mountain or the corporate ladder, Everyday Survival will change the way you view your choices in our complex, dangerous, and quickly changing world. 6 illustrations

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 288 pages
• Publisher: W.W. Norton & Co. (September 17, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0393058387
• ISBN-13: 978-0393058383
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.2 out of 5 stars See all reviews (16 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #192,192 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars "Well, I guess I better write another book", December 25, 2008

By	John I. Mcclendon - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The first half of the book gives some solid vignettes about internal scripts and behavioral models that explain why our brains sometimes run on autopilot and get us into trouble. But the final half of the book really has nothing to do with the title. It's a meandering, free-association ramble about whatever the heck happened to be in the author's head the minute his fingers were striking the keys. Once I got to Page 254 where he tries to compare the curve of entropy of the universe since the big bang to the curve of a human emotional response in a crisis, I cut my losses and threw it on the "to sell" pile.

After the success of "Deep Survival", it's almost like this book is just a mechanical attempt to get his next paycheck while his name still has cachet.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

1.0 out of 5 stars The first six chapters are on why people do stupid things. There are 16 chapters., October 13, 2008

By	Charlie "Librarian" (Virginia, USA) - See all my reviews

Pros: First six chapters are interesting and about the main reasons why folks do silly things with good examples provided.

Cons: Last 10 chapters are an odd mix of material on saving the Earth, physics, entropy, natural history, "look who I met when I went here" and biography of Gonzales and his father. Sources not cited, only selected bibliography provided. Poorly edited: Caption of picture on page 22 of the hardcover is incorrect, "dollars" is spelled "dolars" on page 210.

11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Starts strong, then unravels, October 12, 2008

By	BC "BC" (Texas) - See all my reviews

Like other reviewers, I have a dog eared, underlined, heavily used copy of Deep Survival. So when I saw that Gonzales had a new book out, I couldn't wait to read it. What disappoints me about this book is not that it is not as good as Deep Survival, but that it starts with some interesting ideas and ends up getting side tracked and derailed.

The first six chapters are excellent. His link between how we make decisions and our impact on the environment are elegant and provocative. He talks about how we walk about in a "vacation state of mind," oblivious to the effects of our actions. I feel like I see this every day in the way people interact with each other. He then applies this "insulation from reality" to a macro view of the earth's systems and how humanity interacts with them.

After chapter six, the book unravels, jumping rapidly from issue to issue, supporting his statements with increasingly dubious science and venturing into New Age territory. One of the major themes of the later chapters is entropy, which is appropriate as there is a general decline into disorder in the later chapters.

I didn't pick up this book expecting a treatise on environmental responsibility and was not disappointed when Gonzales started down that path. I can, however, see how a "rugged individualist" would be shocked to find ideas about ecological stewardship in a book that looks like it is going to be about wilderness adventures. For those people, you've been warned; maybe you should look for a different book. For everyone else, find this book at your library, read the first six chapters and then return it.