Author: Honoré de Balzac
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781939663382
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 80
Book Description
Honoré de Balzac's Treatise on Modern Stimulants is a meditation on five stimulants--tea, sugar, coffee, alcohol and tobacco--by an author very conscious of the fact that his gargantuan output of work was driven by an excessive intake (his bouts of writing typically required 10 to 15 cups of coffee a day) that would ultimately shorten his life. First published in French in 1839 as an appendix to Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's Physiology of Taste, this Treatise was at once Balzac's effort at addressing what he perceived to be an oversight in that cornerstone of gastronomic literature; a chapter toward his never-completed body of analytic studies (alongside such essays as Treatise on Elegant Living) that were to form an overarching "pathology of social life"; and a meditation on the impact of pleasure and excess on the body and the role they play in shaping society. Balzac here describes his "terrible and cruel method" for brewing a coffee that can help the artist and author find inspiration; explains why tobacco can be credited with having brought peace to Germany; and describes his first experience of alcoholic intoxication (which required seventeen bottles of wine and two cigars). Beyond its braggadocio and whimsy, though, this treatise ultimately speaks to Balzac's obsession with death and decline, and attempts to confront in capsule form the broader implications of dissipating one's vital forces. This edition includes illustrations to an earlier French edition by Pierre Alechinsky.
Treatise on Modern Stimulants
Author: Honoré de Balzac
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781939663382
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 80
Book Description
Honoré de Balzac's Treatise on Modern Stimulants is a meditation on five stimulants--tea, sugar, coffee, alcohol and tobacco--by an author very conscious of the fact that his gargantuan output of work was driven by an excessive intake (his bouts of writing typically required 10 to 15 cups of coffee a day) that would ultimately shorten his life. First published in French in 1839 as an appendix to Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's Physiology of Taste, this Treatise was at once Balzac's effort at addressing what he perceived to be an oversight in that cornerstone of gastronomic literature; a chapter toward his never-completed body of analytic studies (alongside such essays as Treatise on Elegant Living) that were to form an overarching "pathology of social life"; and a meditation on the impact of pleasure and excess on the body and the role they play in shaping society. Balzac here describes his "terrible and cruel method" for brewing a coffee that can help the artist and author find inspiration; explains why tobacco can be credited with having brought peace to Germany; and describes his first experience of alcoholic intoxication (which required seventeen bottles of wine and two cigars). Beyond its braggadocio and whimsy, though, this treatise ultimately speaks to Balzac's obsession with death and decline, and attempts to confront in capsule form the broader implications of dissipating one's vital forces. This edition includes illustrations to an earlier French edition by Pierre Alechinsky.
Publisher:
ISBN: 9781939663382
Category : Cooking
Languages : en
Pages : 80
Book Description
Honoré de Balzac's Treatise on Modern Stimulants is a meditation on five stimulants--tea, sugar, coffee, alcohol and tobacco--by an author very conscious of the fact that his gargantuan output of work was driven by an excessive intake (his bouts of writing typically required 10 to 15 cups of coffee a day) that would ultimately shorten his life. First published in French in 1839 as an appendix to Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin's Physiology of Taste, this Treatise was at once Balzac's effort at addressing what he perceived to be an oversight in that cornerstone of gastronomic literature; a chapter toward his never-completed body of analytic studies (alongside such essays as Treatise on Elegant Living) that were to form an overarching "pathology of social life"; and a meditation on the impact of pleasure and excess on the body and the role they play in shaping society. Balzac here describes his "terrible and cruel method" for brewing a coffee that can help the artist and author find inspiration; explains why tobacco can be credited with having brought peace to Germany; and describes his first experience of alcoholic intoxication (which required seventeen bottles of wine and two cigars). Beyond its braggadocio and whimsy, though, this treatise ultimately speaks to Balzac's obsession with death and decline, and attempts to confront in capsule form the broader implications of dissipating one's vital forces. This edition includes illustrations to an earlier French edition by Pierre Alechinsky.
Honoré de Balzac
Author: Albert Keim
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 286
Book Description
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category :
Languages : en
Pages : 286
Book Description
The Coloniality of Modern Taste
Author: Zilkia Janer
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100081808X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205
Book Description
This book analyzes the coloniality of the concept of taste that gastronomy constructed and normalized as modern. It shows how gastronomy’s engagement with rationalist and aesthetic thought, and with colonial and capitalist structures, led to the desensualization, bureaucratization and racialization of its conceptualization of taste. The Coloniality of Modern Taste provides an understanding of gastronomy that moves away from the usual celebratory approach. Through a discussion of nineteenth-century gastronomic publications, this book illustrates how the gastronomic notion of taste was shaped by a number of specifically modern constraints. It compares the gastronomic approach to taste to conceptualizations of taste that emerged in other geographical and philosophical contexts to illustrate that the gastronomic approach stands out as particularly bereft of affect. The book argues that the understanding of taste constructed by gastronomic texts continues to burden the affective experience of taste, while encouraging patterns of food consumption that rely on an exploitative and unsustainable global food system. This book will appeal to students and scholars interested in cultural studies, decoloniality, affect theory, sensory studies, gastronomy and food studies.
Publisher: Taylor & Francis
ISBN: 100081808X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 205
Book Description
This book analyzes the coloniality of the concept of taste that gastronomy constructed and normalized as modern. It shows how gastronomy’s engagement with rationalist and aesthetic thought, and with colonial and capitalist structures, led to the desensualization, bureaucratization and racialization of its conceptualization of taste. The Coloniality of Modern Taste provides an understanding of gastronomy that moves away from the usual celebratory approach. Through a discussion of nineteenth-century gastronomic publications, this book illustrates how the gastronomic notion of taste was shaped by a number of specifically modern constraints. It compares the gastronomic approach to taste to conceptualizations of taste that emerged in other geographical and philosophical contexts to illustrate that the gastronomic approach stands out as particularly bereft of affect. The book argues that the understanding of taste constructed by gastronomic texts continues to burden the affective experience of taste, while encouraging patterns of food consumption that rely on an exploitative and unsustainable global food system. This book will appeal to students and scholars interested in cultural studies, decoloniality, affect theory, sensory studies, gastronomy and food studies.
Balzac's Lives
Author: Peter Brooks
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681374501
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
Enter the mind of French literary giant Honoré de Balzac through a study of nine of his greatest characters and the novels they inhabit. Balzac's Lives illuminates the writer's life, era, and work in a completely original way. Balzac, more than anyone, invented the nineteenth-century novel, and Oscar Wilde went so far as to say that Balzac had invented the nineteenth century. But it was above all through the wonderful, unforgettable, extravagant characters that Balzac dreamed up and made flesh—entrepreneurs, bankers, inventors, industrialists, poets, artists, bohemians of both sexes, journalists, aristocrats, politicians, prostitutes—that he brought to life the dynamic forces of an era that ushered in our own. Peter Brooks’s Balzac’s Lives is a vivid and searching portrait of a great novelist as revealed through the fictional lives he imagined.
Publisher: New York Review of Books
ISBN: 1681374501
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 281
Book Description
Enter the mind of French literary giant Honoré de Balzac through a study of nine of his greatest characters and the novels they inhabit. Balzac's Lives illuminates the writer's life, era, and work in a completely original way. Balzac, more than anyone, invented the nineteenth-century novel, and Oscar Wilde went so far as to say that Balzac had invented the nineteenth century. But it was above all through the wonderful, unforgettable, extravagant characters that Balzac dreamed up and made flesh—entrepreneurs, bankers, inventors, industrialists, poets, artists, bohemians of both sexes, journalists, aristocrats, politicians, prostitutes—that he brought to life the dynamic forces of an era that ushered in our own. Peter Brooks’s Balzac’s Lives is a vivid and searching portrait of a great novelist as revealed through the fictional lives he imagined.
Treatise on Elegant Living
Author: Honoré de Balzac
Publisher: Wakefield Handbooks
ISBN: 9780984115501
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 84
Book Description
Honoré de Balzac's 1830 Treatise on Elegant Living was a keystone text on dandyism, preceding Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly's Anatomy of Dandyism (1845) and Charles Baudelaire's "The Dandy" (in The Painter of Modern Life, 1863), and marking an important shift from the early dandyism of the British Regency to the intellectual and artistic dandyism of nineteenth-century France. The Treatise is the first true philosophical expression of dandyism, and is full of well-crafted aphorisms: "Elegant living is, in the broad acceptance of the term, the art of animating repose," runs one classic definition of dandyism, and "One must have studied at least as far as rhetoric to lead an elegant life" asserts the importance of verbal pirouette and dexterous quipping to the dandy. Further embellished with anecdotes and historical and personal illustrations, Balzac's Treatise even features a fictitious encounter with the original dandy himself, Beau Brummell. Never before translated into English, this witty tract makes for an illuminating cornerstone to Balzac's Human Comedy (which was originally to have included a never-completed four-part philosophical "Pathology of Social Life"). Above all, it represents a decisive moment in the history of dandyism, and an entertaining exposition on the profundities of what lies deepest within all of us: our appearance.
Publisher: Wakefield Handbooks
ISBN: 9780984115501
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 84
Book Description
Honoré de Balzac's 1830 Treatise on Elegant Living was a keystone text on dandyism, preceding Jules Barbey d'Aurevilly's Anatomy of Dandyism (1845) and Charles Baudelaire's "The Dandy" (in The Painter of Modern Life, 1863), and marking an important shift from the early dandyism of the British Regency to the intellectual and artistic dandyism of nineteenth-century France. The Treatise is the first true philosophical expression of dandyism, and is full of well-crafted aphorisms: "Elegant living is, in the broad acceptance of the term, the art of animating repose," runs one classic definition of dandyism, and "One must have studied at least as far as rhetoric to lead an elegant life" asserts the importance of verbal pirouette and dexterous quipping to the dandy. Further embellished with anecdotes and historical and personal illustrations, Balzac's Treatise even features a fictitious encounter with the original dandy himself, Beau Brummell. Never before translated into English, this witty tract makes for an illuminating cornerstone to Balzac's Human Comedy (which was originally to have included a never-completed four-part philosophical "Pathology of Social Life"). Above all, it represents a decisive moment in the history of dandyism, and an entertaining exposition on the profundities of what lies deepest within all of us: our appearance.
Coffeeland
Author: Augustine Sedgewick
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143110748
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 450
Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice “Extremely wide-ranging and well researched . . . In a tradition of protest literature rooted more in William Blake than in Marx.” —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker The epic story of how coffee connected and divided the modern world Coffee is an indispensable part of daily life for billions of people around the world. But few coffee drinkers know this story. It centers on the volcanic highlands of El Salvador, where James Hill, born in the slums of Manchester, England, founded one of the world’s great coffee dynasties at the turn of the twentieth century. Adapting the innovations of the Industrial Revolution to plantation agriculture, Hill helped turn El Salvador into perhaps the most intensive monoculture in modern history—a place of extraordinary productivity, inequality, and violence. In the process, both El Salvador and the United States earned the nickname “Coffeeland,” but for starkly different reasons, and with consequences that reach into the present. Provoking a reconsideration of what it means to be connected to faraway people and places, Coffeeland tells the hidden and surprising story of one of the most valuable commodities in the history of global capitalism.
Publisher: Penguin
ISBN: 0143110748
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 450
Book Description
A New York Times Book Review Editors’ Choice “Extremely wide-ranging and well researched . . . In a tradition of protest literature rooted more in William Blake than in Marx.” —Adam Gopnik, The New Yorker The epic story of how coffee connected and divided the modern world Coffee is an indispensable part of daily life for billions of people around the world. But few coffee drinkers know this story. It centers on the volcanic highlands of El Salvador, where James Hill, born in the slums of Manchester, England, founded one of the world’s great coffee dynasties at the turn of the twentieth century. Adapting the innovations of the Industrial Revolution to plantation agriculture, Hill helped turn El Salvador into perhaps the most intensive monoculture in modern history—a place of extraordinary productivity, inequality, and violence. In the process, both El Salvador and the United States earned the nickname “Coffeeland,” but for starkly different reasons, and with consequences that reach into the present. Provoking a reconsideration of what it means to be connected to faraway people and places, Coffeeland tells the hidden and surprising story of one of the most valuable commodities in the history of global capitalism.
José Martí
Author: Alfred J. López
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477323775
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 431
Book Description
José Martí (1853–1895) was the founding hero of Cuban independence. In all of modern Latin American history, arguably only the “Great Liberator” Simón Bolívar rivals Martí in stature and legacy. Beyond his accomplishments as a revolutionary and political thinker, Martí was a giant of Latin American letters, whose poetry, essays, and journalism still rank among the most important works of the region. Today he is revered by both the Castro regime and the Cuban exile community, whose shared veneration of the “apostle” of freedom has led to his virtual apotheosis as a national saint. In José Martí: A Revolutionary Life, Alfred J. López presents the definitive biography of the Cuban patriot and martyr. Writing from a nonpartisan perspective and drawing on years of research using original Cuban and U.S. sources, including materials never before used in a Martí biography, López strips away generations of mythmaking and portrays Martí as Cuba’s greatest founding father and one of Latin America’s literary and political giants, without suppressing his public missteps and personal flaws. In a lively account that engrosses like a novel, López traces the full arc of Martí’s eventful life, from his childhood and adolescence in Cuba, to his first exile and subsequent life in Spain, Mexico City, and Guatemala, through his mature revolutionary period in New York City and much-mythologized death in Cuba on the battlefield at Dos Ríos. The first major biography of Martí in over half a century and the first ever in English, José Martí is the most substantial examination of Martí’s life and work ever published.
Publisher: University of Texas Press
ISBN: 1477323775
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 431
Book Description
José Martí (1853–1895) was the founding hero of Cuban independence. In all of modern Latin American history, arguably only the “Great Liberator” Simón Bolívar rivals Martí in stature and legacy. Beyond his accomplishments as a revolutionary and political thinker, Martí was a giant of Latin American letters, whose poetry, essays, and journalism still rank among the most important works of the region. Today he is revered by both the Castro regime and the Cuban exile community, whose shared veneration of the “apostle” of freedom has led to his virtual apotheosis as a national saint. In José Martí: A Revolutionary Life, Alfred J. López presents the definitive biography of the Cuban patriot and martyr. Writing from a nonpartisan perspective and drawing on years of research using original Cuban and U.S. sources, including materials never before used in a Martí biography, López strips away generations of mythmaking and portrays Martí as Cuba’s greatest founding father and one of Latin America’s literary and political giants, without suppressing his public missteps and personal flaws. In a lively account that engrosses like a novel, López traces the full arc of Martí’s eventful life, from his childhood and adolescence in Cuba, to his first exile and subsequent life in Spain, Mexico City, and Guatemala, through his mature revolutionary period in New York City and much-mythologized death in Cuba on the battlefield at Dos Ríos. The first major biography of Martí in over half a century and the first ever in English, José Martí is the most substantial examination of Martí’s life and work ever published.
The Coffee Book
Author: Nina Luttinger
Publisher: New Press, The
ISBN: 1595587241
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 269
Book Description
A history of coffee from the sixth century to Starbucks that’s “good to the last sentence” (Las Cruces Sun News). One of Library Journal’s “Best Business Books” This updated edition of The Coffee Book is jammed full of facts, figures, cartoons, and commentary covering coffee from its first use in Ethiopia in the sixth century to the rise of Starbucks and the emergence of Fair Trade coffee in the twenty-first. The book explores the process of cultivation, harvesting, and roasting from bean to cup; surveys the social history of café society from the first coffeehouses in Constantinople to beatnik havens in Berkeley and Greenwich Village; and tells the dramatic tale of high-stakes international trade and speculation for a product that can make or break entire national economies. It also examines the industry’s major players, revealing the damage that’s been done to farmers, laborers, and the environment by mass cultivation—and explores the growing “conscious coffee” market. “Drawing on sources ranging from Molière and beatnik cartoonists to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the authors describe the beverage’s long and colorful rise to ubiquity.” —The Economist “Most stimulating.” —The Baltimore Sun
Publisher: New Press, The
ISBN: 1595587241
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 269
Book Description
A history of coffee from the sixth century to Starbucks that’s “good to the last sentence” (Las Cruces Sun News). One of Library Journal’s “Best Business Books” This updated edition of The Coffee Book is jammed full of facts, figures, cartoons, and commentary covering coffee from its first use in Ethiopia in the sixth century to the rise of Starbucks and the emergence of Fair Trade coffee in the twenty-first. The book explores the process of cultivation, harvesting, and roasting from bean to cup; surveys the social history of café society from the first coffeehouses in Constantinople to beatnik havens in Berkeley and Greenwich Village; and tells the dramatic tale of high-stakes international trade and speculation for a product that can make or break entire national economies. It also examines the industry’s major players, revealing the damage that’s been done to farmers, laborers, and the environment by mass cultivation—and explores the growing “conscious coffee” market. “Drawing on sources ranging from Molière and beatnik cartoonists to the Food and Agriculture Organization, the authors describe the beverage’s long and colorful rise to ubiquity.” —The Economist “Most stimulating.” —The Baltimore Sun
50 Classic Biographies
Author: Golgotha Press
Publisher: BookCaps Study Guides
ISBN: 1610424352
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 12295
Book Description
Learn more about some of the most interesting people to ever live with this anthology of 50 classic biographies. An active table of contents is included to make it easy to quickly find the book you are looking for. Abraham Lincoln by Lord Charnwood The Adventures of Daniel Boone by Uncle Philip Alaska Days with John Muir by Samual Hall Alfred Tennyson by Andrew Lang Andrew Jackson by William Garrott Brown Balzac by Frederick Lawton Bacon by Richard William Church Benjamin Franklin by John Torrey Morse, Jr. An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill by William Frederick Charles Darwin by Grant Allen Chaucer by Adolphus William Ward Christopher Columbus by Mildred Stapley Byne Claudius by C. Suetonious Tranquillus Men of Letters: Coleridge by H. D. Traill Daniel Defoe by William Minto Emily Brontë by A. Mary F. Robinson Frederick Douglass by Charles Waddell Chesnutt George Washington by William Roscoe Thayer George Eliot by George Willis Cooke Gilbert Keith Chesterton by Patrick Braybrooke H. G. Wells by J. D. Beresford Hawthorne by Henry James Henry VIII and His Court by Herbert Tree Herbert Hoover by Vernon Kellogg Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters by William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur-Leigh John Bunyan by James Anthony Froude John Knox by A. Taylor Innes John Quincy Adams by John. T. Morse Julius Caesar by C. Suetonious Tranquillus Life and Adventures of Calamity Jane by Herself Life of Charles Dickens by Frank Marzials Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee by John Esten Cooke The Life of Jesus of Nazareth by Rush Rhees Life of John Keats by William Michael Rossetti Life of John Milton by Richard Garnett The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti by John Addington Symonds St. Francis of Assisi by Paul Sabatier Life of Wagner by Louis Nohl A Life of William Shakespeare by Sidney Lee Mark Twain by Archibald Henderson Matthew Arnold by G. W. E. Russell Nero by C. Suetonious Tranquillus Patrick Henry by Moses Coit Tyler The Princess Pocahontas by Virginia Watson Queen Victoria by Lytton Strachey Queen Elizabeth by Jacob Abbott Rudyard Kipling by John Palmer Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography by William Roscoe Thayer Thomas Jefferson by Henry Childs Merwin DISCLAIMER: There has been concern about the table of contents (or lack thereof) in the ""50 Classic Books"" Series. Golgotha Press has addressed this problem and readers who download the books as of November 2011 can access a functional table of contents by going to the front of the book and paging forward two pages. Because of the size of this book, the ""active"" feature in the conversion is removed. We are trying resolve this problem, but until then, please follow the steps above. If you still experience the problem, please contact us so we can investigate exactly what is happening. Please note, however, that the table of contents does not become active until you purchase the book--preview mode does not currently support active TOC's. We apologize for any confusion or frustration this has caused."
Publisher: BookCaps Study Guides
ISBN: 1610424352
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 12295
Book Description
Learn more about some of the most interesting people to ever live with this anthology of 50 classic biographies. An active table of contents is included to make it easy to quickly find the book you are looking for. Abraham Lincoln by Lord Charnwood The Adventures of Daniel Boone by Uncle Philip Alaska Days with John Muir by Samual Hall Alfred Tennyson by Andrew Lang Andrew Jackson by William Garrott Brown Balzac by Frederick Lawton Bacon by Richard William Church Benjamin Franklin by John Torrey Morse, Jr. An Autobiography of Buffalo Bill by William Frederick Charles Darwin by Grant Allen Chaucer by Adolphus William Ward Christopher Columbus by Mildred Stapley Byne Claudius by C. Suetonious Tranquillus Men of Letters: Coleridge by H. D. Traill Daniel Defoe by William Minto Emily Brontë by A. Mary F. Robinson Frederick Douglass by Charles Waddell Chesnutt George Washington by William Roscoe Thayer George Eliot by George Willis Cooke Gilbert Keith Chesterton by Patrick Braybrooke H. G. Wells by J. D. Beresford Hawthorne by Henry James Henry VIII and His Court by Herbert Tree Herbert Hoover by Vernon Kellogg Jane Austen, Her Life and Letters by William Austen-Leigh and Richard Arthur-Leigh John Bunyan by James Anthony Froude John Knox by A. Taylor Innes John Quincy Adams by John. T. Morse Julius Caesar by C. Suetonious Tranquillus Life and Adventures of Calamity Jane by Herself Life of Charles Dickens by Frank Marzials Life of Gen. Robert E. Lee by John Esten Cooke The Life of Jesus of Nazareth by Rush Rhees Life of John Keats by William Michael Rossetti Life of John Milton by Richard Garnett The Life of Michelangelo Buonarroti by John Addington Symonds St. Francis of Assisi by Paul Sabatier Life of Wagner by Louis Nohl A Life of William Shakespeare by Sidney Lee Mark Twain by Archibald Henderson Matthew Arnold by G. W. E. Russell Nero by C. Suetonious Tranquillus Patrick Henry by Moses Coit Tyler The Princess Pocahontas by Virginia Watson Queen Victoria by Lytton Strachey Queen Elizabeth by Jacob Abbott Rudyard Kipling by John Palmer Theodore Roosevelt; An Intimate Biography by William Roscoe Thayer Thomas Jefferson by Henry Childs Merwin DISCLAIMER: There has been concern about the table of contents (or lack thereof) in the ""50 Classic Books"" Series. Golgotha Press has addressed this problem and readers who download the books as of November 2011 can access a functional table of contents by going to the front of the book and paging forward two pages. Because of the size of this book, the ""active"" feature in the conversion is removed. We are trying resolve this problem, but until then, please follow the steps above. If you still experience the problem, please contact us so we can investigate exactly what is happening. Please note, however, that the table of contents does not become active until you purchase the book--preview mode does not currently support active TOC's. We apologize for any confusion or frustration this has caused."
Evolutionary Medicine
Author: Wenda Trevathan
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195103556
Category : Diseases
Languages : en
Pages : 497
Book Description
Evolution is the single most important idea in modern biology, shedding light on virtually every biological question, from the shape of orchid blossoms to the distribution of species across the planet. Until recently, however, the theory has had little impact on medical research or practice. Evolutionary Medicine shows how this is beginning to change. Collecting work from leaders in the field, this volume describes an array of new and innovative approaches to human health that are based on an appreciation of our long evolutionary history. For example, it shows how evolution helps to explain the complex relationship between our immune systems and the virulence and transmission of human viruses. It also shows how comparisons between how we live today and how our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived thousands of years ago illuminate a variety of contemporary ills, including obesity, lower-back pain, and insomnia.
Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA
ISBN: 0195103556
Category : Diseases
Languages : en
Pages : 497
Book Description
Evolution is the single most important idea in modern biology, shedding light on virtually every biological question, from the shape of orchid blossoms to the distribution of species across the planet. Until recently, however, the theory has had little impact on medical research or practice. Evolutionary Medicine shows how this is beginning to change. Collecting work from leaders in the field, this volume describes an array of new and innovative approaches to human health that are based on an appreciation of our long evolutionary history. For example, it shows how evolution helps to explain the complex relationship between our immune systems and the virulence and transmission of human viruses. It also shows how comparisons between how we live today and how our hunter-gatherer ancestors lived thousands of years ago illuminate a variety of contemporary ills, including obesity, lower-back pain, and insomnia.