Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken Genes [Paperback]

A biology professors illuminating tour of the physical imperfectionsfrom faulty knees to junk DNAthat make us human. ?A funny, fascinating catalog of our collective shortcomings thats tough to put down.Discover?We humans like to think of ourselves as highly evolved creatures. But if we are supposedly evolutions greatest creation, why do we have such bad knees? Why do we catch head colds so oftentwo hundred times more often than a dog does? How come our wrists have so many useless bones? Why is the vast majority of our genetic code pointless? And are we really supposed to swallow and breathe through the same narrow tube? Surely theres been some kind of mistake? As professor of biology Nathan H. Lents explains inHuman Errors, our evolutionary history is indeed nothing if not a litany of mistakes, each more entertaining and enlightening than the last. The human body is one big pile of compromises. But that is also a testament to our greatness: as Lents shows, humans have so many design flaws precisely because we are very, very good at getting around them. A rollicking, deeply informative tour of humans four-billion-year-and-counting evolutionary saga,Human Errorsboth celebrates our imperfections and offers an unconventional accounting of the cost of our success.US

"A funny, fascinating catalog of our collective shortcomings that’s tough to put down." —Discover   "An entertaining and enlightening guide to human imperfections." —Financial Times   "The author's offbeat view of human evolution makes for lively reading and invites readers to think deeply." —Kirkus Reviews    "Wildly entertaining." —Bustle.com   "Nobody will see their body in the same way again."