Humans A brief history of how we f----d it all up

No matter how many challenges we conquer, catastrophe is always lurking just around the corner. That's the crux of journalist and humorist Phillips' schadenfreude-laced paean to human incompetence, which finds that our capacity for creativity and communication sets us apart from other species but can also lead to terrible decisions and disastrous, unforeseen consequences. With chapters like Why Your Brain Is an Idiot and Nice Environment You've Got Here, Phillips catalogs various cognitive failures that have continually led humanity astray confirmation bias, the Dunning-Kruger effect, prejudice and ridicules thousands of years of intellectual, political, and social screw-ups. Chapter-ending listicles like 5 of the Weirdest Manias in History and 7 Amazing Sights You'll Never See, Because Humans Ruined Them add extra acidity to the mixture. Cheeky and vulgar yet surprisingly erudite, the book is like Yuval Noah Harari's Sapiens (2015) retold by a standup comedian a few drinks in. Phillips is not bashful about deploying unprintable profanity for the sake of emphasis and humor, making this ideal for readers in the mood for a laugh so you don't cry approach to human history.--Chad Comello Copyright 2019 Booklist

It's an article of faith and certainty among many humanistic circles that the enterprise of our species has been one of continual progress, to which London-based humorist Phillips replies, bollocks.It's been a mess ever since our protohominid arboreal ancestor, Lucy, fell out of a tree and died only to have her bones discovered in the 1970s and become a star of paleontology: "And yet," writes the author, "the only reason we know about her is because, bluntly, she fucked up." According to Phillips, humans are particularly good at this, and instances of error outweigh our better achievements. The author's approach is spirited and goofy, and though the fault-finding can seem excessive at times, you've got to enjoy a book that explores weird manias (including "outbreaks of panic that malign forces are stealing or shrinking men's penises") and misguided actions like introducing a potentially species-hopping virus to kill off the rabbits that humans introduced to Australia in the first place. Phillips can go obscure at the drop of a hat, as when he writes of the sultanship of Ahmed I of the Ottoman Empire and the brother-to-brother succession that followed his premature death: "It's fair to say that this did not go well." The author moves easily from subject to subject, and he does have a point: Some of our best-laid plans quickly go awry. A good example is the endless built-in struggle of democracy to balance tyrannies of the minority and keep from "sliding into autocracy," and it's undeniable, unless you benefit from denial, that we've made an incredible mess of the planet and are pretending things are OK "when instead we should probably be running around in a panic like our house was on fire, whichit sort of is."Al Gore by way of Monty Python. Readers should be aware of the F-bomb throughout, but otherwise we should all be hanging our heads in shame, lifting them for a frequent chuckle. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.