
Adaptable
How Your Unique Body Really Works and Why Our Biology Unites Us
Herman Pontzer(Author)
Penguin Young Readers (Publisher)
Published on 25. March 2025
Book
Hardback
352 pages
978-0-593-53930-9 (ISBN)
Description
"A new understanding of how our bodies work, how to keep them healthy, and how our biological diversity unites us rather than divides us. How does the body work-and why does it seem to work so differently for each of us? Why do we grow tall or short, obese or slim? Why do some of us stay healthy despite our bad habits while others who do all the right things fall ill? When we look around the planet, why do people vary in skin color, facial features, stature, body proportions, and disease risk? The answer is both simple and powerful: we're different because we're adaptable. Over the past 100,000 years, as humans expanded into every biome on the planet, our bodies were fine-tuned to our local environments. Adaptability is at the heart of being human and the engine of our diversity. Variation isn't a bug, it's a feature. As an evolutionary anthropologist working with human populations around the globe, Pontzer's research embraces our incredible diversity, documenting the connections between lifestyle, landscape, local adaptations, and health"-- Provided by publisher.
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
United States
Product notice
sewn/stitched
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
- B/W LINE ART T/O
Dimensions
Height: 236 mm
Width: 164 mm
Thickness: 35 mm
Weight
506 gr
ISBN-13
978-0-593-53930-9 (9780593539309)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Person
Herman Pontzer is a professor of evolutionary anthropology and global health at Duke University. He is an internationally recognized researcher in human energetics and evolution. Over two decades of research in the field and laboratory, Dr. Pontzer has conducted pathbreaking studies across a range of settings, including fieldwork with Hadza hunter-gatherers in northern Tanzania, fieldwork on chimpanzee ecology in the rainforests of Uganda, and metabolic measurements of great apes in zoos and sanctuaries around the globe. Dr. Pontzer’s work has been covered in The New York Times, the BBC, PBS, The Washington Post, The Atlantic, NPR, Scientific American, and others. He is the author of Burn (Avery, 2021).