Cover-NotSoDifferent

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Scheduled Book talks/signings:

NYC – Book Culture, June 13th.     Boston Public Library, June 16th.     Oakland Public Library, July 27th.     San Francisco Public Library, July 28th.     Bay Area Atheists Club Quarters Hotel (San Francisco), July 30th.     Santa Barbara Zoo, July 31st.     Los Angeles Public Library, July 31st.     New York Public Library, August 31st.     New York Atheists Monthly Meeting, October 9th.     Pint of Science, NYC, October 25th.     Boston Ethical Society, October 30th.     John Jay College Author Series, November 15th. Macaulay Honors College, November 28th.     JASA, March 26th.

To invite me for a lecture, panel, or author event, you may contact my manager at: lents@noraofny.com. Or you can write me directly at:  NLENTS-[at]-jjay-[dot]-cuny-[dot]-edu


Reviews and Endorsements:

“…thoroughly enjoyable and accessible…”

-Publisher’s Weekly, starred review (full review)


“Readers will find interesting…  …Teachers will love the numerous anecdotes and experiments that will make them and their students think..”

-Quarterly Review of Biology, click here for full review.


“Lents’ and de Waal’s books offer us an insightful summary of the recent state of the fields of ethology and animal cognition from practicing scientists who approach animals with generosity and open-mindedness. Such work is essential for helping to reverse classical conceptions of animality”

– This Year’s Work in Critical and Cultural Theory.


“…Lents’ compact and comprehensive book impresses me as an excellent tool for that purpose, covering as it does a wide range of related topics, from justice and morality to sex and love and from fear and grief to envy and jealousy. It is readable, interesting and straightforward and backed up with an extensive collection of scientific references.”

-Greenspirit Book Reviews, click here for complete review


“…a most interesting and wide-ranging book… I highly recommend Not So Different for a broad audience. It’s an easy read absent a lot of disciplinary jargon.”

-Psychology Today, click here for full review.


“…fascinating compendium of studies, personal observations and deductions…  Anyone interested in animal behavior and in modern psychology will find this an absorbing read…”

-Fresh Fiction, click here for full review.


“… a very accessible and interesting read.”

-Decatur Herald & Review, click here for full review


-Interview with Psych2go, click here to read.


Page 99 Test: click here.


“…written in an accessible and comprehensible way, thanks to which it can be an excellent literature, not only for specialists.”

-Kosmos (in Polish), Click here for full review.


From the book jacket:

Not So Different lucidly and entertainingly reminds us just how much of us there is in other mammals and vertebrates – and how much of them there is in us. You may never think of yourself in quite the same way again.”

— Ian Tattersall, American Museum of Natural History, author of Masters of the Planet: The Search for Our Human Origins and Becoming Human: Evolution and Human Uniqueness


“As someone who has studied animal behavior and cognitive ethology and animal emotions for many decades, I’ve always been fascinated by the similarities and differences between humans and other animals. In Not So Different, Nathan Lents focuses on the similarities and readers will discover that humans and nonhumans share numerous traits, some of which might seem rather surprising, but the existence of which can be readily explained by well-accepted evolutionary arguments and considerations of the social worlds of the animals involved, something Dr. Lents does very well.”

— Marc Bekoff, author of The Emotional Lives of Animals and Rewilding our Hearts: Building Pathways of Compassion and Coexistence


“In a beautifully written and very readable book, Nathan H. Lents provides compelling evidence that animals are not that different from us, making it difficult to argue that there is a vast gulf between us and the rest of the animals. As Lents artfully shows, that gulf just does not exist.”

Con Slobodchikoff, author of Chasing Doctor Dolittle: Learning the Language of Animals


“Nathan H. Lents has put together a comprehensive look at animal counterparts of human emotions and thoughts. The scope and quantity of his examples make a compelling argument for zoological precursors to nearly all human sentiments and many cognitive capabilities. His book is a charming read for general audiences that will also find value in the biology courses of high school and university curricula.”

Joan Roughgarden, author of Evolution’s Rainbow: Diversity, Gender, and Sexuality in Nature and People

11 responses to “Book: Not So Different”

  1. […] It is difficult to overstate the scientific impact of Goodall, Fossey, and Galdikas. Their three subject species (chimps, gorillas, and orangutans, respectively) are our three closest living relatives, and these women have produced more understanding about them than any other scientist, living or dead. (Possibly more than ALL other living scientists combined, especially in the case of Galdikas.) Louis Leakey was absolutely correct that understanding how these species lives illuminates how our long-ago ancestors lived. Indeed, studying primate behavior illuminates human behavior – we are not so different! […]

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  2. […] recently completed a small book tour through California promoting Not So Different: Finding Human Nature in Animals and the San Francisco Public Library shot a high-quality video of the talk. I’m really happy […]

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  3. […] by email and at my book talks in response to my discussion of the “guilty dog look” in my recent book. For that reason, I’d like to expand my discussion a little bit, because it’s a very […]

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  4. […] week, Ken Ham put out a blog post denouncing the thesis of my book, that human and animal behaviors are not as different as they may appear. In case you haven’t […]

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  5. […] by email and at my book talks in response to my discussion of the “guilty dog look” in my recent book. For that reason, I’d like to expand my discussion a little bit, because it’s a very […]

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  6. […] The study of the rich gestural repertoire of bonobos adds further weight to the theory that humans first found our voice through body language. As so often happens when we study our fellow animals, we learn something about ourselves. After all, we are not so different. […]

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  7. […] Human Evolution Blog and hosts the science podcast This World of Humans. He is the author of Not So Different: Finding Human Nature in Animals and Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken […]

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  8. […] Human Evolution Blog and hosts the science podcast This World of Humans. He is the author of Not So Different: Finding Human Nature in Animals and Human Errors: A Panorama of Our Glitches, from Pointless Bones to Broken […]

    Like

  9. […] to emphasizing the behavioral similarities between humans and other animals, as I did in my book Not So Different,1 there is no denying that we are peculiar animals. While one could argue, for example, that […]

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