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Since then, there's been a massive change for us. A difficult change too, but so worthwhile. Margie and Jordan are really great people, and they make the book funny, informative and loving, but strong enough to shake you up. It's just so great... learning to learn is difficult, but ultimately incredibly rewarding. 1000 stars!
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Cosmetically, the book is a two-face: while cover design by Chris Nurse is nothing short of outstanding, the internal layout is not without blemish. For example, outside margins are too wide, story titles are not always at the same height in the page, and the author's name is italicised in some but not all of the instances. Another gripe I have is that page numbers on the right-hand pages are left-aligned; plus, headers have no indication about the stories presented below them: these will give you a bad time if you want to riffle through the book to look up a specific something. There are a few extra typesetting warts and moles as well, as I noticed some characters showing up in a different size than the rest of the text, uneven spacing between words, typos derived from bad OCR, and so on. I sincerely encourage RazorBlade Press to pay more attention to internal design in the future, and run a few spell checks as well. Still, don't let appearances fool you, because the writing on these pages is top-notch.
In the whole, I was not in the least disappointed by Hideous Progeny while expecting quality work. Many short stories surprised me by their original angles, and all are very well written. The subjects are quite varied too, although some do overlap a little - it seems inevitable given the limitations inherent to their collective premise. I have my favourites, of course: Peter Crowther's piece is shocking yet touching at the same time, and the idea behind "Mad Jack" is a simple but nevertheless brilliant one. "The Banker of Ingolstadt" is perhaps the funniest in the book, and I found Steven Volk's "Blitzenstein" to rank among the best.
Whatever shortcomings the book has, they're quickly overwhelmed by the superb fiction it it, not to mention a downright gorgeous cover. For £6.99, it's well worth getting Hideous Progeny: not only will you be adding a fine specimen of a book to your library, you'll also be helping small press business to thrive. Because I want to see more from RazorBlade Press. Oh yeah.
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These include finds such as the Spanish Sima de los Huesos fossils, and the Greek Petrolona fossils, both of which strongly seem to represent an early, archaic form of Neanderthal in their heavier brow-ridges and smaller (about 1200 cc) braincases. Along with these, there are discussions of the several classic Neanderthal finds from France and Germany, too. As I mentioned, the author goes into a fair amount of anatomical detail discussing and comparing the fossils from the many different sites, and so this book may be somewhat difficult, dry, and technical for the non-specialist. Overall, however, it's a very thorough and detailed discussion of the state of our knowledge about this important homonid. The average reader, however, may find the author's prose a little turgid, and the overall technical level a little rough going, but in general, I can't fault the writing too much given the level of technical difficulty of the book.
In addition to the comparative anatomy, the author also discusses Neanderthal tool-making and cultural artifacts, such as the Mousterian industry, and others.
Given the difficulty of the book, I would recommend that many people read Richard Klein's The Dawn of Human Culture before tackling this book, unless you're already somewhat knowledgeable about human evolution. This is a more accessible and very readable book that discusses all the early pre-homonids and homonids from Ardipethicus ramidus up to Homo sapiens, giving much more equal weight to the different stages in human evolution. It will give you a better perspective on the entire line of human evolution before reading Jordan's more specialized volume, which heavily emphasizes Neanderthal. Jordan does provide later chapters discussing earlier and later fossils, so eventually he places Neanderthal in the context of the other homonids, but you don't find these until about half-way through the book.
Another nice point about Klein's book is the interesting discussion of high-tech dating methods and how they're being used, such as radio-isotope methods, luminescence dating, ESR or electron spin resonance techniques, and so on. Klein is also careful to discuss the pros and cons of each dating method, and what the difficulties are in using each method.
Overall, Jordan's book is an excellent, thorough, and fairly technical discussion of the subject which is worth reading despite being somewhat tough going for many readers.
All in all, I wanted to give this book three stars, but I had to relent and give it four due to its discussion of many of the important issues of human evolution and its wealth of detail. Oh, and also, if you are looking for something specific to Neanderthals...less than half this book deals with them. You can do better on Neanderthals with other authors.
People just beginning might wish to read IN SEARCH OF THE NEANDERTHALS by Christopher Stringer and Clive Gamble. Being published in the 1993-4, it is already outdated, but most of the basic information on fossils, camp sites, food sources and stone tools are still valid, aided with maps, charts and timelines. THAN come to Paul Jordan's book for the updated data and ideas.
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Paul Jordan in this book clearly illustrates our evolutionary relationships with early primates, and onwards with proto-humans such as Australopithecines, Homo ergaster and erectus, Homo heidelbergensis, Neanderthalers, Cro-Magnon, and others, up to modern Homo sapiens sapiens. I found the new research concerning mitichondrial DNA fascinating. Jordan also discusses the types of artifacts, including tools and weapons, used by early man, and in addition covers man as the social animal and the invention of religion and art, and many other of the activities of early man, including hunting, dwellings, fire use, and agriculture.
This is a book that is firmly based in reality but I realize does conflict with the world-views of most people, as a result these types of books tend to be not read widely, and that is a shame as this volume is very informative. I would have given this book five stars instead of four, but this book is in terrible need of some illustrations, there are none.
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