Transcendence by Gaia Vince

 In this work, Vince explains evolution not just as something that happened to us, but as a synergistic process that occurred between our genes, environment and culture.  Transcendence investigates human evolution through four lenses: fire, language, beauty, and time, to explain how we got to where we are today.

I enjoyed this work, though I wouldn't say it was particularly groundbreaking.  There was a lot of straightforward we did X so Y, A happened in the environment so we had to B.  While it was interesting to learn that perhaps those were the reasons for particular evolutionary jumps, these were things that I knew or that made sense.  Some of the book touched on new ground, which I found interesting and enlightening.

There were also times where Vince seemed to get a bit lost in the text and i would have to re-read a passage to make proper sense of it.  These passages sometimes felt unnecessarily convoluted or intentionally aimed at her colleagues rather than the more average reader of her work.

Overall, I think Transcendence is an interesting primer for a new look at evolution and I would recommend it to anyone with an interest in the field.  I give this one 3/5 stars.