A biology professor's "funny, fascinating" tour of the physical imperfections -- from faulty knees to junk DNA -- that make us human (Discover).

We humans like to think of ourselves as highly evolved creatures. But if we are supposedly evolution's greatest creation, why do we have such bad knees? Why do we catch head colds so often -- two hundred times more often than a dog does? How come our wrists have so many useless bones? Why is the vast majority of our genetic code pointless? And are we really supposed to swallow and breathe through the same narrow tube? Surely there's been some kind of mistake?

As professor of biology Nathan H. Lents explains in Human Errors, our evolutionary history is indeed nothing if not a litany of mistakes, each more entertaining and enlightening than the last. The human body is one big pile of compromises. But that is also a testament to our greatness: as Lents shows, humans have so many design flaws precisely because we are very, very good at getting around them. A rollicking, deeply informative tour of humans' four-billion-year-and-counting evolutionary saga, Human Errors both celebrates our imperfections and offers an unconventional accounting of the cost of our success.

"An insightful and entertaining romp through the myriad ways in which the human body falls short of an engineering ideal -- and the often-surprising reasons why." -- Ian Tattersall, author of The Monkey in the Mirror

• We started tracking this book on May 9, 2018.
• This book was $14.99 when we started tracking it.
• The price of this book has changed 44 times in the past 2,370 days.
• The current price of this book is $2.99 last checked 9 hours ago.
• This book is at its lowest price in the past 90 days.
• This lowest price this book has been offered at in the past year is $1.99.
• The lowest price to date was $1.99 last reached on July 5, 2024.
• This book has been $1.99 2 times since we started tracking it.
• The highest price to date was $14.99 last reached on February 4, 2019.
• This book has been $14.99 4 times since we started tracking it.

• Science & Math

• Text-to-Speech: Disabled
• Lending: Disabled
• Print Length: 255 Pages
• File Size: 9,188 KB