Author: Jonathan Gottschall
Title: The Storytelling Animal: How
Stories Make Us Human
Description: Gottschall
describes the importance of narrative to humans.
Writing style: Pretty
engaging. Gottschall walks the talk—as he understands the importance of story,
he makes sure his book has plenty of stories to keep the reader interested and
to prove his points.
Audience: This
book isn’t as scholarly as the book on Honesty by Ariely or the book on
language use by Pennebaker, but it would appeal to the same audience—people who
are interested in how language affects the human situation.
Major ideas: Gottschall
even ties in the imaginings of the mentally ill and the haphazard narratives in
our dreams as he surveys the many ways we are tied to narrative—and how we
attempt to create narrative from the most random events.
Wrap-up: I don’t
see this book as breaking any ground—narrative theorists are way past this—but
for the interested layperson, Gottschall makes a convincing case. 4/5*
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