Customer Reviews

Evolution Man: Or, How I Ate My Father

5 star:		(23)
4 star:		(3)
3 star:		(2)
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Sweet Jehovah, this is a funny book. The conceit is an obvious one when you think about it - write the story of our evolutionary ancestors from a first-person perspective, but in a language that shows all the sensibilities of a well-read, reflective and slightly pompous late-nineteenth century Englishman. The courtship scenes alone I think I have re-read about fifty times and never without laughing.

We first read this book in Kenya in the early 60s, while we were working on the archaeology of early man. Subsequently my husband taught anthropology (Plio-Pleistocene archaeology) at U.C. Berkeley and used it as a text to lighten his Introduction to Archaeology classes. As "practitioners" we found it hilarious and amazingly insightful, and it has continued to provide amusement ever since. Our battered paperback has long needed replacement, and is shelved where it cannot be permanently borrowed by an envious reader. PLEASE reprint in English. I always wanted to ask Mr. Lewis if he had modelled Father after Dr. Louis Leakey.... Another light-hearted and well-informed view of evolution is the Larry Gonick "History of Everything, Including Sex"

"The Evolution Man, Or, How I Ate My Father" tells about a normal family in prehistorical times. The main character, Ernest, reminiscences how his family/clan, which was led by his father, discovered fire, domesticated dogs, invented the first bow, drew the first cave drawings, and more. Even though this
family lived thousands and thousands of years ago, they weren't so different from us. In fact, what I particularly liked about this book is that the main characters, while still ape-men, are talking and thinking like modern people. Ernest's father and his uncle keep arguing how "Modern Technology" (i.e., fire) is dangerous, and how maybe they should go back to the trees. Despite that, they are STILL ape-men: when Ernest's brother finds a wife, Ernest keeps thinking how amazingly fat she is - meaning, truly gorgeous!
Even though this book was very humoristic, it was also intellectually stimulating. It offered some very interesting points about how many things which are the cornerstones of human life started. All this is presented in a truly hilarious way.
I wholeheartly recommend this book for anyone, especially if you're a bit interested on how the human species was at the very beginning. Absolutely a wonderful book - I wish I could see this as a movie.

You MUST read this book if you are into parenting, humor and/or family books. The ingenious concept of critiquing "modern" (circa 1960) life in the stone age is thoroughly explored and carried out with grace, insight, intelligence and literally laugh-out-loud humor. Truly a one-of-a-kind book. I read it in my small-town library in the late 60s and was so surprised it had been re-published. Thank god. If you're looking for another hilarious, smart and offbeat book about family life, try "I Sleep At Red Lights: A True Story of Life After Triplets," by Bruce Stockler.

Humoristic parable about the transition from ape to Homo sapiens with a pessimistic end.
Against the recommendations of his uncle, who defends the old order, the first intelligent anthropoid ape uses the fire he discovers to chase the wild animals and take their holes as a home. He forces his children to exogamy and develops research and technology, which he shares with everybody. The Darwinian evolution is marching on.
The evolution stalls when some of his children take power and keep the latest acquired technological knowledge for themselves in order to dominate the world. They do this against the will of their father, but they kill him.

A very modern story, sparkingly told. Not to be missed.

I had this book in the early '90's and loaned it to a friend. This friend gave it to another and that person to another... basically the book went missing. I have been searching for it ever since. I'm so very happy that it's in print again. Of course I had to buy a copy. I don't want to give any details without giving away the story - just believe me when I say that this is the funniest book I have ever read!

Roy Lewis has taken an extremely controversial topic and created a witty and humorous book. I felt extremely comfortable reading the book and found each little explanation of evolution (how his father got fire) to be slightly true.
Great read, especially if you love sciences or history.

I picked up this tidy little volume on the sale table at the local book store and have read it 3 times, I'm on the 4th time now! It's a clever look at evolution, adaptation, and prehistoric life through the eyes of a rather civilized just-out-of-the-trees family. I highly recommend this book to anyone looking for an entertaining, fun, read! The perfect vacation book!

Ernest is young man growing up in a not-so-typical Pleistocene family. His father, Edward, has invented portable fire and is pushing, pushing, pushing for mankind to evolve at at faster rate. Uncle Vanya thinks they are flirting with disaster, what with all this eating of animal flesh and using fire, and what were they thinking coming down from the trees in the first place, but Father continues on his scientific (and otherwise) experiments. These experiments put Ernest and his brothers in all kinds of interesting predicaments (which, frankly, beats beating flints all day long) as they hurry to advance their horde out of the Pleistocene era into a new and glorious future.

This is not a slap-stick funny book, it is an intellectually funny book that also has hilarious moments. I had to go for the dictionary a few times, which was funny in and of itself--getting the dictionary to look up a big word that some caveman is using. It's also an allegory of sorts, a stop and think kind of book. Even while I was laughing my head off about Uncle Vanya warning Father about the dangers of progress and telling him to go back to the trees, I could. . . well, I could see both sides--hear myself in both sides actually. I've never read a book like it, quite frankly. I picked it up because Terry Pratchett mentioned it as his all time favorite book and I can see the attraction. It's one I will have to read again, digest, laugh and think over some more.

Lewis' writing is wonderful; droll, dry wit and amazingly detailed description sandwiched in with just darn good writing. His pictures of family life are so real that I dare say he's warped any historical notions I may have had of the Pleistocene era. Overall, this is just a masterful book, but I recognize that I may not be for everyone because it's a book whose humor is not just laid out for you--you have to think a little too.

This is a gem of a book, but it's a rarified thing. We live today in a world of fiction that has been heavily influenced by movies and television. Today's fiction assumes we have no prior knowledge, and it spoon-feeds us everything we need for the purposes of getting through to the end. In the past, however, books were frequently written with the assumption of a great deal of external knowledge. A trivial example of this is the use of Latin tags: it assumes (i) the reader knows Latin, and (ii) the reader knows the entire work from which the tag is taken. A writer, using this device, can create ironic counterpoint. But of course it doesn't work at all if the reader doesn't know Latin and doesn't recognize the tag.

Likewise with The Evolution Man. Unless you come to it with a great deal of external knowledge, much of it is just flat and not funny at all. This is a book full of bone-dry English wit, not in-your-face jokes. It was written by a highly educated writer for his own amusement and that of his friends, all of whom had equivalent knowledge to his own. The jokes, therefore, worked for this audience and continue to work for readers whose range of knowledge is equivalent. But for everyone else, "fugeddabahdit."

For those readers who do appreciate the quasi-Dickensian counterpoint between erudite language and physical squalor, the conceit of a sub-human worrying about his exact location in geological time and possessing a consciousness of the need always to evolve, always to think of the next big thing, this is a wonderfully funny book. It combines several critiques of then-current sociological and psychological dogma with a perceptive view of the different kinds of human motivation and the outcomes they predicate. It also shows clearly how technological progress is a slow and sequential thing: until you have fire you can't have hardened spear-tips; until you have hardened spear-tips you can't have arrows, and therefore bows. There's a ladder of necessary preconditions for any advance, and the author gently leads us up this ladder. By doing so, the book give us pause to consider the wretched condition of prehistoric hominids and prompts us to be profoundly grateful to all the nameless innovators stretched out across time whose creations enable us to live warm, secure and comfortable lives. And the book accomplishes all of this and more in a style that is a delight to read. We see Uncle Vanya railing against progress when his brother creates the domestic fire - and Vanya rails most often against this unnatural innovation when the nights are cold and damp. Likewise Vanya protests against the unnaturalness of cooking meat before eating it, and comes to protest repeatedly as his teeth fail him and his digestive system can no longer cope with the roots and tough vegitation that formerly constituted his natural diet. Points are made with subtle humor throughout the book, which is its main charm. Nothing is belaboured.

But this is not a book for the casual reader, for whom it will largely be disappointing.