“Henry Gee, paleontology editor at Nature, confronts two commonly held views of evolution and effectively demolishes both, persuasively arguing that evolution doesn’t work the way most people believe it does and that the entire concept of ‘human exceptionalism’ (the idea that humans are fundamentally superior to other animals due to ‘language, technology, or consciousness’) is erroneous. . . . He buttresses these points with an impressive and accessible overview of the pattern of human evolution, showing just how little we actually know and arguing that different evolutionary stories could likely fit the extant data.”

Publishers Weekly

“If you only read one book on evolution this year, make it this one. You will be dethroned. But you won’t be disappointed.”

Geoscientist

"The Accidental Species is an excellent guide to our current knowledge of how we got where we are. . . . Highly recommended."

BBC Focus

“Gee sets out vehemently to dispute our common tendency to see ourselves as the pinnacle of creation, the bold, brilliant branch that is the final growth of the evolutionary tree of life. . . . a thought-provoking and challenging book.”

Library Journal

"With a delightfully irascible sense of humor, Henry Gee reflects on our origin and all the misunderstanding that we impose on it. The Accidental Species is an excellent primer on how—and how not—to think about human evolution.”

Carl Zimmer, author of A Planet of Viruses

“The Accidental Species is at once an eminently readable and important book. For almost three decades Henry Gee, senior editor at Nature, has helped bring some of the most important discoveries in paleontology to the scientific community and the public at large. Employing years of experience, sharp wit, and great erudition, Gee reveals how most of our popular conceptions of evolution are wrong. Gee delights in shedding us of our assumptions to reveal how science has the power to inform, enlighten, and ultimately surprise.”

Neil Shubin, author of Your Inner Fish

“Quite simply, the best book ever written about the fossil record and humankind’s place in evolution.”

John Gribbin, author of Alone in the Universe: Why Our Planet Is Unique

 “If you only read one book on human evolution, or indeed one book on evolution, make it this one.”

Ted Nield, author of Incoming and Supercontinent

“You may think there was nothing more to say about evolution, but The Accidental Species proves that there is—and wonderful stuff it is.”

Brian Clegg | Popular Science Book Review

“Gee is a paleontologist, an evolutionary biologist and a senior editor at the journal Nature. He is also a blues musician and a major Tolkien fan — a set of quirky characteristics that may help explain the combination of science and humor that pervades The Accidental Species. It is Gee’s contention that scientists have been completely wrong in seeing humans as the apex of evolution. He denies that we developed big brains, the ability to use tools and all the rest through some kind of progression toward superiority. It was a lot more random, he says: We just kind of turned out this way. He illustrates his premise with detailed analysis and a mocking tone.”

Washington Post

"Gee’s big beef in The Accidental Species is with a common and popular narrative in which the evolution of man is a steadily unrolling tale of progress. Think of the classic image of a knuckle-dragging, ape-like creature giving way to a hunched, primitive man who in the following frames becomes taller and bolder until finally he looks like a Premier League football player minus the shorts. The truth, Gee argues . . . is much more complex and surprising."

Telegraph

“The Accidental Species should be a welcome addition to the bookshelf of any social scientist with an interest in evolution. Recent work in the area . . . highlights imaginations captured by prehistorical ancestral roots. Gee’s writing provides background for the curious newcomer. Offering high readability and large dollops of humour, our 10-year-old read a chapter to me when I was driving. Recommended.”

LSE Review of Books

“[A] persuasive book. . . . Gee is good at explaining how fossil evidence has been (mis)interpreted to fit that famous picture of man rising from the ape, growing taller and wiser with each step before culminating in us. The reality, he points out, is very different: until recently (no later than 50,000 years ago) there were many species of humans across the world. Some, such as the Neanderthals, had brains at least as big as ours; while others, such as the diminutive ‘hobbit’found on the Indonesian island of Flores, were more closely akin to the apes.”

Financial Times

“If you want a primer on modern thinking about human evolution, you could do far worse than The Accidental Species. Gee writes well and has a taste for the absurd and the unintention­ally amusing. You will learn much about the state of the fossil record and about how hard it is to make sense of the limited findings that we do have.”

BioScience

“An editor at Nature, Gee possesses a prose style that hews to that magazine’s rigorous standards of scientific journalism while at the same time exhibiting a colloquial vivacity. . . . It’s with this kind of sparkling, clear-eyed, often droll prose thatThe Accidental Species conducts a Cook’s tour of evolution, specifically human evolution.”

Barnes and Noble Review

“Paleontologist and science writer/editor Gee has written a slim and engaging polemic against ‘human exceptionalism,’ which he takes generally to mean the idea that human evolution is goal-directed and we are its culmination. . . . A very readable book by a knowledgeable author.”

Reports of the National Center for Science Education