The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human [Kindle Edition] Author: Jonathan Gottschall | Language: English | ISBN:
B005LVR6BO | Format: PDF, EPUB
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Humans live in landscapes of make-believe. We spin fantasies. We devour novels, films, and plays. Even sporting events and criminal trials unfold as narratives. Yet the world of story has long remained an undiscovered and unmapped country. It’s easy to say that humans are “wired” for story, but why?
In this delightful and original book, Jonathan Gottschall offers the first unified theory of storytelling. He argues that stories help us navigate life’s complex social problems—just as flight simulators prepare pilots for difficult situations. Storytelling has evolved, like other behaviors, to ensure our survival.
Drawing on the latest research in neuroscience, psychology, and evolutionary biology, Gottschall tells us what it means to be a storytelling animal. Did you know that the more absorbed you are in a story, the more it changes your behavior? That all children act out the same kinds of stories, whether they grow up in a slum or a suburb? That people who read more fiction are more empathetic?
Of course, our story instinct has a darker side. It makes us vulnerable to conspiracy theories, advertisements, and narratives about ourselves that are more “truthy” than true. National myths can also be terribly dangerous: Hitler’s ambitions were partly fueled by a story.
But as Gottschall shows in this remarkable book, stories can also change the world for the better. Most successful stories are moral—they teach us how to live, whether explicitly or implicitly, and bind us together around common values. We know we are master shapers of story. The Storytelling Animal finally reveals how stories shape us. Download latest books on mediafire and other links compilation The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human Epub Free
- File Size: 5843 KB
- Print Length: 271 pages
- Page Numbers Source ISBN: 0547391404
- Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; 1 edition (April 10, 2012)
- Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
- Language: English
- ASIN: B005LVR6BO
- Text-to-Speech: Enabled
X-Ray:
- Lending: Not Enabled
- Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #29,005 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)
- #14
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Evolution - #29
in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Books & Reading > General - #33
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Popular Culture
- #14
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Professional & Technical > Professional Science > Evolution - #29
in Books > Literature & Fiction > History & Criticism > Books & Reading > General - #33
in Kindle Store > Kindle eBooks > Nonfiction > Politics & Social Sciences > Social Sciences > Popular Culture
First, the short version: Excellent book on the power of story. Fascinating and insightful, a must read if you have any interest at all in the subject matter. One of the best books I have read in a long time . . . fresh, original, and enlightening.
Now the long version: The Storytelling Animal is a fascinating account of the power of story. The author has included many original anecdotes and drawn from hundreds of sources to create a compelling account of how stories make us human.
Each chapter covers a different aspect of this strange phenomenon, from dreams to memoirs to the future of storytelling.
* The Witchery of Story: This chapter is covers the power of story throughout history, geography, and our daily life. The quote that begins the chapter is one of my favorites:
"Lord! When you sell a man a book you don't sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there's all heaven and earth in a book, in a real book I mean." Christopher Morley, Parnassus on Wheels.
* The Riddle of Fiction: Why do we need story? What drives us, what sense does it make? While I did not agree with everything the author concludes here, the theories he presents are insightful. The account he gives of children and the pretend play they engage in is well worth reading, one of my favorite parts of the book.
Hell Is Story-Friendly: Why do we crave stories with trouble in them?
"Stories the world over are almost always about people (or personified animals) with problems. the people want something badly - to survive, to win the girl or the boy, to find a lost child. But big obstacles loom between the protagonists and what they want.
As both a nonfiction author and a bestselling novelist, I've pondered certain puzzles for decades.
Why do people find certain ideologies and philosophies appealing, but not others? Why do we so often hold to our points of view dogmatically, intractable to all facts, reason, and logic? What is the source of dreams? Why do certain common myths seem to be indelible and universal, across cultures and throughout history? Why does music conjure in us mental imagery? What is the key to the kind of motivational commitment that impels some people to face and triumph over incredible odds and obstacles? Why do we find certain people, at first glance, overpoweringly attractive, and others repulsive? Why do we love some books and movies, and hate others?
These and many other mysteries of the human mind and personality are central to the concerns of the artist, psychologist, historian, or person plying any field of communication or persuasion. But is there anything that links together all of these seemingly disparate things?
In this brilliant and engrossing book, Jonathan Gottschall reveals the central, essential, and seminal role played by STORY -- or "Narrative" -- in human thought, action, and culture. Moving with seemingly effortless creative ease from riveting personal anecdotes to abstract sociological theories, from baffling historical phenomena to intriguing psychological experiments, Gottschall offers a key to understanding much that has baffled man throughout the ages.
For decades, I had believed that philosophical ideas and ideologies reigned supreme in the culture; but over time, events and experience began to collide with that assumption.
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