Interview with Angela Saini, author of Superior: The Return of Race Science
Angela Saini, author of Superior: The Return of Race Science recommends some intriguing books! Before jumping into the interview, please check out Angela's book:
Review from Book Depository:
Where did the idea of race come from, and what does it mean? In an age of identity politics, DNA ancestry testing and the rise of the far-right, a belief in biological differences between populations is experiencing a resurgence. The truth is: race is a social construct. Our problem is we find this hard to believe.
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Superior: The Return of Race Science
In Superior, award-winning author Angela Saini investigates the concept of race, from its origins to the present day. Engaging with geneticists, anthropologists, historians and social scientists from across the globe, Superior is a rigorous, much needed examination of the insidious and destructive nature of the belief that race is real, and that some groups of people are superior to others.
Buy On:
Easons €14.00
Book Depository €9.32
Waterstones £7.99
Wordery $11.74
Q. Do you have a favourite smart thinking book (and why that book)?
Without a doubt it would be The Woman That Never Evolved by Sarah Blaffer Hrdy. It’s perhaps the most perfect example of how solid, rigorous research can combat sexist myths. I had the pleasure of staying with her when I interviewed her for Inferior.
Review From Book Depository:
What does it mean to be female? Sarah Blaffer Hrdy--a sociobiologist and a feminist--believes that evolutionary biology can provide some surprising answers. Surprising to those feminists who mistakenly think that biology can only work against women. And surprising to those biologists who incorrectly believe that natural selection operates only on males.
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The Woman That Never Evolved
In The Woman That Never Evolved we are introduced to our nearest female relatives competitive, independent, sexually assertive primates who have every bit as much at stake in the evolutionary game as their male counterparts do. These females compete among themselves for rank and resources, but will bond together for mutual defense. They risk their lives to protect their young, yet consort with the very male who murdered their offspring when successful reproduction depends upon it. They tolerate other breeding females if food is plentiful, but chase them away when monogamy is the optimal strategy. When "promiscuity" is an advantage, female primates--like their human cousins--exhibit a sexual appetite that ensures a range of breeding partners. From case after case we are led to the conclusion that the sexually passive, noncompetitive, all-nurturing woman of prevailing myth never could have evolved within the primate order.
Yet males are almost universally dominant over females in primate species, and Homo sapiens is no exception. As we see from this book, women are in some ways the most oppressed of all female primates. Sarah Blaffer Hrdy is convinced that to redress sexual inequality in human societies, we must first understand its evolutionary origins. We cannot travel back in time to meet our own remote ancestors, but we can study those surrogates we have--the other living primates. If women --and not biology--are to control their own destiny, they must understand the past and, as this book shows us, the biological legacy they have inherited.
Buy On:
Book Depository €24.61
Waterstones £24.95
Q. What's the most recent smart thinking book you've read (and how would you rate it)?
I’ve been reading Slavery and Social Death by Orlando Patterson. A classic for good reason. I would rate it ten out of ten.
Review from Book Depository:
In a work of prodigious scholarship and enormous breadth, which draws on the tribal, ancient, premodern, and modern worlds, Orlando Patterson discusses the internal dynamics of slavery in sixty-six societies over time. These include Greece and Rome, medieval Europe, China, Korea, the Islamic kingdoms, Africa, the Caribbean islands, and the American South.
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Slavery and Social Death: A Comparative Study
Buy On:
Book Depository €20.84
Waterstones £18.95
Wordery $23.48
Q. Do you have a favourite childhood book?
I was deeply affected by I’m The King of the Castle by Susan Hill. The memory of it is what I always revisit when I think of the suffocating nature of being trapped by abuse.
Review From Waterstones:
'Some people are coming here today, now you will have a companion.'
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I'm the King of the Castle
But young Edmund Hooper doesn't want anyone else in Warings, the rambling Victorian house he shares with his widowed father. Nevertheless Charles Kingshaw and his mother are soon installed and Edmund sets about persecuting his fearful new playmate.
From the dusty back rooms of Warings through the gloomy labyrinth of Hang Wood to the very top of Leydell Castle, Edmund pursues Charles, the balance of power slipping back and forth between bully and victim. With their parents oblivious, the situation speeds towards a crisis...
Darkly claustrophobic and morally ambiguous, Susan Hill weaves a classic tale of cruelty, power, and the dangerous games we play as children.
Buy On:
Easons €11.20
Waterstones £8.99
Wordery $10.36
Q. Do you prefer reading on paper, Kindle or listening to an audiobook?
Always paper for me. I’ve recorded an audiobook but never listened to one.
Q. Do you have a favourite bookshop (and why that shop)?
Waterstones in Crouch End, my local chain bookstore, kept my last book, Superior, in their window for a whole year. I’ll always be grateful to them for that. But my favourite independents are Newham Bookshop in east London and Lighthouse Books in Edinburgh.
Many thanks to Angela for recommending some intriguing books! Please don't forget to check out Angela's book Superior : The Return of Race Science.
Daryl
Image Copyrights: HarperCollins Publishers (Superior), Harvard University Press (The Woman That Never Evolved), Harvard University Press (Slavery and Social Death), Penguin Books Ltd (I'm The King of the Castle).
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