I desperately wanted to be a biological anthropologist but ended up a cultural one so books like this feel like a connection to my what if life. Even with the knowledge I had starting this book, there was still an incredible amount to discover, which isn't surprising considering how long Unger has been a professional in his field. There's so much to learn about humans as a species and it doesn't need to include the psychological aspect. Thank you for the approval of this title.

Non-fiction that tells the story of human evolution from the point of view of our teeth. This is less silly than it may sound; teeth, being harder than bones, preserve extremely well in the fossil record and we often have more teeth from an extinct species than any other part of them. In addition, the shape and wear of teeth can tell us a lot about the diet of a species – just imagine how different the teeth of a lion look from those of a cow. Ungar gives the reader the basics of the topic, explaining the history and methods of studying teeth. He's got plenty of examples of modern primates and their teeth, from gorillas to lemurs to little monkeys. But of all this is in the service of learning more about where we came from, and what drove our evolution – climate change? predators? stone tools? Most of the book covers early human evolution, giving a close look at the teeth of species like Paranthropus bosei, Homo habilis, and the Australopithecines (better known as the genus that includes "Lucy"). However, two chapters at the end cover the invention of farming and the post-Industrial diet (with its abundance of sugar and soft, processed foods) on modern humans' jaws and teeth.

It's an interesting topic, but unfortunately Ungar's writing style is extremely dry and academic. I could hardly get through a page without finding my attention had wandered and I needed to reread the last paragraph. I'm all for introducing the details of human evolution and how we learned them to a general audience, but books like that need authors who can capture an audience and hold it. Ungar isn't up to the task.

https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/2411085740

Informative but not exciting

This book is a thorough, perhaps too thorough, look at human evolution through the study of food and teeth. While I found the book informative, author Peter Ungar did not communicate to me the excitement that I think he feels about the subject. I felt no sense of wonder, discovery or humor. I recently read “Built on Bones” by Brenna Hassett and found that book amazing and hard to put down, because Hassett put so much of herself into the book. I can only recommend Evolution’s Bite to readers who are very interested in the fine details of evolution.