What We Are Reading Today: First Steps by Jeremy DeSilva

Jeremy DeSilva writes First Steps with a good sense of humor and a conversational tone.

First Steps examines how walking upright helped us rise above all over species on this planet.

“Moving from developmental psychology labs to ancient fossil sites throughout Africa and Eurasia, DeSilva brings to life our adventure walking on two legs. First Steps examines how walking upright helped us rise above all over species on this planet,” said a review in goodreads.com.

First Steps includes an eight-page color photo insert.

Rebecca Wragg Sykes said in a review for The New York Times: “DeSilva proposes that “our bipedalism is at the root of our uniqueness as a species, and the book is carefully structured, neatly braiding his own research with the wider narrative and history of human evolution.”

The review said that First Steps “is not just a big-picture chronicle. It’s full of very human, intimate details, in the past and present.”

The critic is the author of Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art — a New York Times Notable Book in 2020.