Human Errors cover art

Human Errors

A Panorama of Our Glitches, From Pointless Bones to Broken Genes

 Preview

Get 30 days of Standard free

£5.99/mo after trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options

Human Errors

By: Nathan Lents
Narrated by: L. J. Ganser
Try for £0.00

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £14.35

Buy Now for £14.35

LIMITED TIME OFFER

£0.99/mo for 3 months - terms apply. Offer ends 31 August 2026.
We like to think of ourselves as highly evolved creatures. But if we are evolution's greatest creation, why are we so badly designed? We have retinas that face backward, the stump of a tail, and way too many bones in our wrists. We must find vitamins and nutrients in our diets that other animals simply make for themselves. Millions of us can't reproduce successfully without help from modern science. We have nerves that take bizarre paths, muscles that attach to nothing, and lymph nodes that do more harm than good. And that's just the beginning of the story.

As biologist Nathan H. Lents explains, our evolutionary history is a litany of mistakes, each more entertaining and enlightening than the last. As we will discover, by exploring human shortcomings, we can peer into our past, because each of our flaws tells a story about our species' evolutionary history.

A rollicking, deeply informative tour of our four-billion-year-long evolutionary saga, Human Errors both celebrates our imperfections - for our mutations are, in their own way, a testament to our species' greatness - and offers an unconventional accounting of the cost of our success.

Read by L.J. Ganser
(p) Tantor Media 2018©2018 Nathan H. Lents Biological Sciences Biology Science Thought-Provoking Nutrition Physiology
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1

Critic reviews

HUMAN ERRORS is outstanding, scholarly yet entertaining. Perhaps inadvertently, this funny book argues that if there is an intelligent designer, he is comically hopeless (ADAM RUTHERFORD)
An entertaining and enlightening guide to human imperfections (Clive Cookson)
Spry, plausible, free from jargon and much better than the usual run of popular science and medical books, which are destined to be shelved in the den of geek, Human Errors is the most enjoyable anatomical study since Jonathan Miller's The Body in Question (Roger Lewis)
Chatty and humorous... After reading Human Errors, nobody will see their body in the same way again (William Hartston)
Like any theme park horror house, it's a thoroughly entertaining ride, crammed full of the bizarre and enlightening and ripe with facts with which to wow dinner party guests (Katie Burton)
In Human Errors, Nathan Lents explores our biological imperfections with style, wit and life-affirming insight. You'll finish it with new appreciation for those human failings that, in so many surprising ways, helped shape our remarkable species (DEBORAH BLUM, author of The Poisoner's Handbook)
An insightful and entertaining romp through the myriad ways in which the human body falls short of an engineering ideal - and the often surprising reasons why (IAN TATTERSALL, author of Masters of the Planet)
Anyone who has aged without perfect grace can attest to the laundry list of imperfections so thoroughly and engagingly considered in Human Errors. This is the best book I've read on how poorly designed our bodies are. I learned something new on every page (MICHAEL SHERMER, author of Why People Believe Weird Things and The Believing Brain)
All stars
Most relevant
I’m not as perfect as I thought. Apparently, I have 8 more words to write but my brain is flawed. Sorry 😞

A ‘must read’

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Really good book. I found it fascinating how many flaws we humans still have, despite aeons of evolution. I found the book humerous while being informative and quite thought-provoking. The mention of pandemics in the epilogue seems ironically well-timed (seeing as I'm writing this amidst autumn 2020), but I found the variety of predictions he brings up with relation to the future of humanity quite interesting.
All-in-all, good book. Would recommend. Especially for anyone interested in biology?

Concerned about our species

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
So much i did not know about the human body, super fascinating especially the part about vitamin synthesis and amino acids, so clearly explained. Such a brilliant way of explaining the role of evolution and how it operates feel I’ve learned a lot in such a short book. Highly recommend

Really good book, very enjoyable

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Some great examples and fascinating stories. It’s so interesting to discover the hodge podge history of humans.

Wonderful

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
I am a doctor very interested in human error iin the workplace. Getting a book on errors in human evolution was a bit of an adjustment but I was soon drawn in by the absorbing facts & skilful reading. In Americanese: "Good job"

Evolution rather than Error

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews