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Friendship: The Evolution, Biology, and Extraordinary Power of Life's Fundamental Bond
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About This Book
An engaging and deeply reported investigation of friendship: its evolution, purpose, and centrality in human and nonhuman lives alike. The bonds of friendship are universal and elemental. In Friendship, journalist Lydia Denworth visits the front lines of the science of friendship in search of its biological, psychological, and evolutionary foundations. Finding it to be as old as life on the African savannas, she also discovers that friendship is reflected in our brain waves, detectable in our genomes, and capable of strengthening our cardiovascular and immune systems. Its opposite, loneliness, can kill. As a result, social connection is finally being recognized as critical to our physical and emotional well-being. With warmth and compassion, Denworth weaves together past and present, field biology and cutting-edge neuroscience, to show how our bodies and minds are designed to make friends, the process by which social bonds develop, and how a drive for friendship underpins human (and nonhuman) society. With its refreshingly optimistic vision of the evolution of human nature, this book puts friendship at the center of our lives.
Reviews
"In addition to examining the scientific underpinnings of friendship, Denworth capably demonstrates how loneliness, an increasing hazard as Americans age and lose friends and family, is truly a health- and life-threatening condition, and there are things to be done to avoid it."
"...by focusing on mother-baby relationships, Denworth misses the fact that social brains can and do develop in the absence of mammal-style parental care ..."
"In an accessible and enlightening style, she takes us with her on her journeys to primatology research sites ..."
"After reading Denworth's treatise on friendship, you may want to immediately call your best friend, or make a new one."
"the author is judicious in weighing scientific evidence, most clearly with respect to the effects of videogames and social media on people's social lives ..."
"Denworth's work achieves the best of science writing by making complicated concepts clear."
"Science enthusiasts may find Denworth's survey wider than it is deep, but it does provide an effective introduction to its subject."
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