The books and resources below represent a selection of some of my favorite books that I have read on history, anthropology, and culture over the last few years. This list and my reviews are continually updated as I complete new books or revisit previously read titles.

Lucy: The Beginnings of Humankind

Donald C. Johanson, Maitland A. Edey

When Donald Johanson found a partical skeleton, approximately 3.5 million years old, in a remote region of Ethiopia in 1974, a headline-making controversy was launched that continues on today. Bursting with all the suspense and intrigue of a fast paced adventure novel, here is Johanson’s lively account of the extraordinary discovery of “Lucy.”

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First Steps: How Upright Walking Made Us Human

Jeremy DeSilva

Paleoanthropologist Jeremy DeSilva explores how unusual and extraordinary this seemingly ordinary ability is. A seven-million-year journey to the very origins of the human lineage, First Steps shows how upright walking was a gateway to many of the other attributes that make us human—from our technological abilities, our thirst for exploration, our use of language–and may have laid the foundation for our species’ traits of compassion, empathy, and altruism.

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Weavers, Scribes, and Kings: A New History of the Ancient Near East

Amanda H. Podany

In this sweeping history of the ancient Near East, Amanda Podany takes readers on a gripping journey from the creation of the world's first cities to the conquest of Alexander the Great. The book is built around the life stories of many ancient men and women, from kings, priestesses, and merchants to bricklayers, musicians, and weavers. Their habits of daily life, beliefs, triumphs, and crises, and the changes that they faced over time are explored through their own written words and the buildings, cities, and empires in which they lived.

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The Sediments of Time: My Lifelong Search for the Past

Meave Leakey, Samira Leakey

In The Sediments of Time, preeminent paleoanthropologist Meave Leakey brings us along on her remarkable journey to reveal the diversity of our early pre-human ancestors and how past climate change drove their evolution. She offers a fresh account of our past, as recent breakthroughs have allowed new analysis of her team’s fossil findings and vastly expanded our understanding of our ancestors.

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White Holes

Carlo Rovelli

Rovelli writes just as compellingly about the work of a scientist as he does the marvels of the universe. He shares the fear, uncertainty, and frequent disappointment of exploring hypotheses and unknown worlds, and the delight of chasing new ideas to unexpected conclusions. Guiding us beyond the horizon, he invites us to experience the fever and the disquiet of science—and the strange and startling life of a white hole.

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Origin: A Genetic History of the Americas

Jennifer Raff

Origin is the story of who the first peoples in the Americas were, how and why they made the crossing, how they dispersed south, and how they lived based on a new and powerful kind of evidence: their complete genomes. Origin provides an overview of these new histories throughout North and South America, and a glimpse into how the tools of genetics reveal details about human history and evolution.

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Cave of Bones: A True Story of Discovery, Adventure, and Human Origins

Lee Berger, John Hawks

A true-life scientific adventure story, this thrilling book takes the reader deep into South African caves to discover fossil remains that compel a monumental reframing of the human family tree.

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Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art

Rebecca Wragg Sykes

In Kindred, Rebecca Wragg Sykes uses her experience at the cutting-edge of Palaeolithic research to share our new understanding of Neanderthals, shoving aside clichés of rag-clad brutes in an icy wasteland. She reveals them to be curious, clever connoisseurs of their world, technologically inventive and ecologically adaptable. Above all, they were successful survivors for more than 300,000 years, during times of massive climatic upheaval.

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Ancestors: A History of Britain in Seven Burials

Alice Roberts

This book is about belonging: about walking in ancient places, in the footsteps of the ancestors. It's about reaching back in time, to find ourselves, and our place in the world.

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