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Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things | 
 enlarge | Author: Laurence Gonzales
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Category: Book
List Price: $25.95
Buy New: $12.20
You Save: $13.75 (53%)
New (56) Used (17) from $11.95
Rating:  9 reviews
Sales Rank: 92017
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 320
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.3
Dimensions (in): 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.1
ISBN: 0393058387
Dewey Decimal Number: 155.9
EAN: 9780393058383
ASIN: 0393058387
Publication Date: September 15, 2008
Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days
Shipping: Expedited shipping available
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: New in new dust jacket. First Edition, First Print. Glued binding. Paper over boards. With dust jacket. 288 p. Contains: Illustrations. Audience: General/trade.
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Product Description
The author of the life-changing bestseller Deep Survival once again brings us revelations about ourselves from the cutting edge of science.
Laurence Gonzales shows how modern society has made us lazy and susceptible to previously unknown threats. "Curiosity, awareness, attention," he writes. "Those are the tools of our everyday survival...we all must be scientists at heart or be victims of forces that we don't understand."
Gonzales turns his talent for gripping narrative, knowledge of the way our minds and bodies work, and bottomless curiosity about the world to the topic of how we can best use the lessons of our evolutionary history to overcome the hazards of everyday life. He finds that natural laws profoundly affect our actions, and he reveals the hidden causes and costs of our behavior, whether as individuals or as a species whose decisions may be leading to darker times. Whether you are climbing a mountain or the corporate ladder, Everyday Survival will change the way you view your choices in our complex, dangerous, and quickly changing world.
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| Customer Reviews: Read 4 more reviews...
"Well, I guess I better write another book" December 25, 2008
John I. Mcclendon
3 out of 3 found this review helpful
The first half of the book gives some solid vignettes about internal scripts and behavioral models that explain why our brains sometimes run on autopilot and get us into trouble. But the final half of the book really has nothing to do with the title. It's a meandering, free-association ramble about whatever the heck happened to be in the author's head the minute his fingers were striking the keys. Once I got to Page 254 where he tries to compare the curve of entropy of the universe since the big bang to the curve of a human emotional response in a crisis, I cut my losses and threw it on the "to sell" pile.
After the success of "Deep Survival", it's almost like this book is just a mechanical attempt to get his next paycheck while his name still has cachet.
Everyday Survival October 21, 2008
M. Forgy (Golden, CO)
2 out of 2 found this review helpful
After hanging on every word while reading Deep Survival, I was very disappointed with Everyday Survival. The first 3-4 chapters showed promise with the same excellent story-telling blended with psychology research, evolutionary psychology, and well developed arguments. After that, however, the book devolves and gets lost in ramblings on entropy, environmentalism, and other topics that have little to do with "everyday survival". Instead, just when you think you know where Gonzales is heading, he drifts in another direction. No cohesive theme brings the book together and just getting through the last five chapters became a challenge.
 The first six chapters are on why people do stupid things. There are 16 chapters. October 13, 2008
Charlie (Virginia, USA)
6 out of 7 found this review helpful
Pros: First six chapters are interesting and about the main reasons why folks do silly things with good examples provided.
Cons: Last 10 chapters are an odd mix of material on saving the Earth, physics, entropy, natural history, "look who I met when I went here" and biography of Gonzales and his father. Sources not cited, only selected bibliography provided. Poorly edited: Caption of picture on page 22 of the hardcover is incorrect, "dollars" is spelled "dolars" on page 210.
Starts strong, then unravels October 12, 2008
BC (Texas)
5 out of 6 found this review helpful
Like other reviewers, I have a dog eared, underlined, heavily used copy of Deep Survival. So when I saw that Gonzales had a new book out, I couldn't wait to read it. What disappoints me about this book is not that it is not as good as Deep Survival, but that it starts with some interesting ideas and ends up getting side tracked and derailed.
The first six chapters are excellent. His link between how we make decisions and our impact on the environment are elegant and provocative. He talks about how we walk about in a "vacation state of mind," oblivious to the effects of our actions. I feel like I see this every day in the way people interact with each other. He then applies this "insulation from reality" to a macro view of the earth's systems and how humanity interacts with them.
After chapter six, the book unravels, jumping rapidly from issue to issue, supporting his statements with increasingly dubious science and venturing into New Age territory. One of the major themes of the later chapters is entropy, which is appropriate as there is a general decline into disorder in the later chapters.
I didn't pick up this book expecting a treatise on environmental responsibility and was not disappointed when Gonzales started down that path. I can, however, see how a "rugged individualist" would be shocked to find ideas about ecological stewardship in a book that looks like it is going to be about wilderness adventures. For those people, you've been warned; maybe you should look for a different book. For everyone else, find this book at your library, read the first six chapters and then return it.
 Stimulates thinking in new ways October 9, 2008
Madeleine L. Vanhecke (USA)
4 out of 6 found this review helpful
I was surprised by how negative some of the reviews of this book are. It seems that people who read Gonzales' previous book, Deep Survival, were disappointed in this one because they expected a very different kind of book. Not having read Deep Survival, I had no particular expectations and I found Everyday Survival thought-provoking and interesting. I don't entirely agree with Gonzales' main thesis - that our modern way of living has made us unable to call on adaptive behavior that came naturally to our prehistoric ancestors, making us at risk in today's world. But, though they were occasionally a tad too drawn out, I found his stories intriguing, his examples powerful, and his overall analysis thought-provoking.
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