On the Origin of Tepees
Why Some Ideas Spread While Others Go Extinct
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- £5.99
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- £5.99
Publisher Description
A journey to uncover the evolution of ideas, from the wheel to the wearing of moustaches
Adopting the part of a cultural Darwin, science writer and filmmaker Jonnie Hughes goes on a road trip through the exotic American Midwest to observe the natural history of ideas. As he dissects the variation and inheritance of odd bits of culture, he examines the fashion for low-riding jeans and moustaches, the wording of successful jokes, the battle between competing shoelace-tying techniques, why Coke wins the cola wars (it's the label), and, naturally, the distinctive features of various tepees. Original, witty, and engaging, On the Origin of Tepees will change how we view the evolution of ideas and ourselves.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Hughes, an award-winning science writer and documentary maker, explores how big ideas begin, evolve, and converge and whether culture, like biology, follows any Darwinian dictates of natural selection in this detective story cum road trip memoir. Hughes and his brother, Adam, trek across America in their Chrysler in order to trace the evolution of tepees used by the Plains Indians that "marvel of human ingenuity... the difference between life and death." Along the way, Hughes maps out the genealogies of other cultural artifacts of Americana the gambrel-roof barn, bourbon whiskey, regional pronunciations and jokes, why Scandinavian immigrants took to the American Midwest, and the invention of the cowboy hat. Taking his cue from Darwin, Hughes intersperses his technical discussions of genetics and biology with sketches of tepees and such oddities of the animal kingdom as naked mole rats, hammerhead fruit bats, oarfish and snapshots from the road that keep the reading brisk, personal, and pleasurable. This ambitious book braids together studies in biology, psychology, history, linguistics, geology, and philosophy into an impressively succinct and readable taxonomy of human culture.
