I have actually read about all these skeletons on other books. Much better books. This is useful if you know nothing about these skeletons but otherwise repetitive. ( )

Way behind on my reviews, gotta catch up before school starts! Prepare for short and choppy...

Okay, this one was a mixed bag. The content completely carried the book, so it's a good thing this was nonfiction instead of fiction. I've been fascinated by early homonids since my biological anthropology class back in freshman year of college (my ideal major would have been English-History-Anthropology-Psychology with minors in Creative Writing and Women's studies, but alas, there is only so much time in the day). I'd actually learned about all but the last of the described skeletons before, though of course not in the detail that Pyne goes into here. If anything, I may have wanted more detail: How could scientists know from just a few bones of a single example of a different species that homonid was male or female? How can they tell that they're different species with only partial skeletons? How do scientists decide what makes a new species (except in the obvious case of homo floresiensis)? How did they preserve the spongy, not-actually-fossilized homo floresiensis bones? I would have liked to know more about the frequently-mentioned Java Man, but that would have ruined the title's alliteration and the book's symmetry.

What's fascinating about this book, though, is that these questions aren't neglected by negligence but by choice. It's remarkable that this book isn't just about human evolution but, in fact, about how modern homo sapiens react to these skeletons: it's not just the scientific story, but the story of the media, the cultural impact. This actually would have made the book more appealing to me up front, since I'm very interested in how humans relate to each other and to the world around them. I would have made this much more obvious up front by slipping another word into the subtitle: "The Cultural Evolution of the World's Most Famous Human Fossils." But that might be the scholarly side of my publishing experience coming through--I can't exactly say that I know better than a trade editor about what titles catch attention. Probably that subtitle sounds too academic and stuffy for the educated, non-specialist reader.

I can definitely tell the writer has potential, but there should have been a lot more editing in this. Granted, I was reading an ARC, so I have no idea how far ahead of the pub date this particular review copy was printed--it's quite possible it did get a lot more editorial help after this point. Some points:

> In the space of three pages, three paragraphs begin, "Today, the Old Man..."
> Three paragraphs are exactly repeated--I seriously hope this is something that was caught before the book went to print!
> I could never figure out why some words were defined but not others. We're told that a scapula is "part of the shoulder" but we don't get a definition of paleoanthropology. I would guess that readers, even if they know what the separate parts mean, might want to know before diving into the text how, exactly, we can extrapolate about human species from fossilized bones. Dinosaurs are guesses enough, and it seems like we have far more of them than we have homonids. (Hey, that would have been a useful factoid to include! But I'm not docking points for that).
> Puns, oh my heck. Here and there they're fun, but for some reason they were almost exclusively concentrated in a single chapter and involved repeated use of the phrase, "no bones about it." Ha flipping ha. You can't use that more than about twice without it becoming a groaner.

Okay, this is picky, but Pyne hinted at a potentially fascinating point in the chapter on homo floresiensis before dropping it like a hot potato: the contemporary local legends of the ebu gogo, small human-like creatures that live in the forest (205). This is a ready-made opening for an interesting sentence or two here about the possibility of overlap between two species of homonid and the length of cultural memory, but Pyne doesn't follow it up. To be clear, the only reason I'm complaining about this is because I did a paper on it in college and because I'm fascinated by the ways some fairy tales are shaped by reality.

Okay, on to quotes--not as many as usual, for which you're probably thankful.

Quote Roundup

74) I just love that the British Museum is saving satire, poetry, and cartoons about Piltdown Man along with the bones. This is exactly the kind of archival work I fantasize about.

97) I must admit, I found it interesting how little Pyne mentioned religious opponents of human evolution. Here's one page where it is addressed. This was also the page where I really understood that this wasn't just a story about the skeletons, but public investment in their discovery and interpretation.

220) Here's where there was an opportunity to discuss how scientists determine sexual dimorphism versus individual variation.

222) I felt a little warm inside knowing that as far back as the 1920s/30s, a male archaeologist tried to nickname a fossil "Nelly" to combat what he saw as explicit sexism by referring to particular hominin discoveries as "man."

Wow, almost none of my quotes were actually quotes. Don't think that's ever happened before...

Overall, I recommend the book for its fascinating content, but not for structural or stylistic execution. But this recommendation is made with the caveat that I have no idea how close to final this ARC draft was when it was printed. And I'm a grumpy fan of continuous narrative who unfairly doesn't cut nonfiction writers a little slack. ( )

When I was eight, I was going to be a paleontologist...I had a book on dinosaurs. When I was nine, I was going to be an anthropologist (I got a new book...), so despite 46 years since, I'm primed to like this book, which I got an early look at via First to Read.

I have more than a passing familiarity with six of the seven - Old Man of La Chapelle (Neanderthal), Piltdown, Taung Child (Australopithicus africanus), Peking, Lucy - of course, and Flo the "Hobbit" (Homo floresiensis). I've devoted reading the past five to eight years to other things, so did not recognize Australopithicus sediba. Thanks to Ms. Pyne, I now do!

Very nicely written, almost in a conversational tone, Ms. Pyne does a great job describing the history of each and why the significance of her chosen "celebrity" fossils. A recommended read.

{A cool thing about reading advanced galleys...sometimes neat artifacts show up: on one page in the margin was an editor's note about needing confirmation of a source, as the article cited didn't have the quote. Bill O'Reilly avoids editors like that.} ( )

This relatively short (243 pages of text in my review copy) readable book is a quick but interesting exploration of the history and cultural impact of some of the most pivotal discoveries of paleoanthropology, approached by examining 7 "famous" fossils, including the Piltdown Man (a hoax fossil), Lucy (named after John Lennon's "Lucy in the Sky" and classified as Australopithecus afarensis), and Flo (a Homo floresiensis, otherwise known as one of the island "Hobbit" people). While readers will learn about the fossils themselves, there's more focus on the scientists who found and promoted the fossils and resulting evolution of cultural ideas about humanity's ancient past. Each of the seven fossils has its own chapter, which in keeping with the theme are ordered by discovery date rather than fossil age--starting with a Neanderthal fossil found in the early 20th century and finishing with a discovery made in 2008. Thought-provoking and entertaining ( )