NewScientist offers this brief, favorable review (subscription required) of Robert Sapolsky's Monkeyluv: And Other Essays on Our Lives as Animals. When I was at Stanford, Sapolsky was much loved by students, and I suspect this collection of essays (most previously published but updated) will have much to offer. Here is a tidbit from the review:
[Sapolsky] wants to know at what age people become closed to new experiences such as a novel genre of music, raw fish with horseradish, or having a stud put through their tongue. He calls a bunch of radio stations, then sushi bars, and finally 35 body-piercing parlours. His conclusions - 35 for music, 39 for food and 23 for body decorations - make depressing reading for anyone contemplating a midlife crisis. It seems that our taste for adventure is one of the first casualties of ageing.
And from Publishers Weekly on Amazon.com:
There are many things one might expect to find within the covers of a collection of essays by a Stanford professor of biology and neurology: a rich understanding of the complexities of human and animal life; a sensitivity to the relationship between our biological nature and our environmental context; a humility in the face of still-to-be-understood facets of the human condition. All these are in Sapolsky's new collection . . .
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