Language Instinct

In this delightful and original book, Jonathan Gottschall offers the first unified theory of storytelling. He argues that stories help us navigate lifeand#8217;s complex social problemsand#8212;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 and#8220;truthyand#8221; than true. National myths can also be terribly dangerous: Hitlerand#8217;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 moraland#8212;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.

and#8212;Library Journal "A lively pop-science overview of the reasons why we tell stories and why storytelling will endure..[Gottschall's] snapshots of the worlds of psychology, sleep research and virtual reality are larded with sharp anecdotes and jargon-free summaries of current research... Gottschall brings a light tough to knotty psychological matters, and heand#8217;s a fine storyteller himself."

and#8212;Kirkus Reviews "They say we spend multiple hours immersed in stories every day. Very few of us pause to wonder why. Gottschall lays bare this quirk of our species with deft touches, and he finds that our love of stories is its own story, and one of the grandest tales out thereand#8212;the story of what it means to be human."

and#8212;Sam Kean, author of The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements "Story is not the icing, itand#8217;s the cake! Gottschall eloquently tells you and#8216;how comeand#8217; in his well researched new book."

and#8212;Peter Guber, CEO, Mandalay Entertainment and author of the #1 New York Times bestseller, Tell To Win "This is a quite wonderful book. It grips the reader with both stories and stories about the telling of stories, then pulls it all together to explain why storytelling is a fundamental human instinct."

and#8212; Edward O. Wilson, University Research Professor and Honorary Curator in Entomology, Harvard University "The Storytelling Animal is a delight to read. It's boundlessly interesting, filled with great observations and clever insights aboutand#12288;television, books, movies, videogames, dreams, children, madness, evolution, morality, love, and more. And it's beautifully writtenand#8212;fittingly enough, Gottschall is himself a skilled storyteller."

and#8212;Paul Bloom, Professor of Psychology at Yale and author of How Pleasure Works "Like the magnificent storytellers past and present who furnish him here with examples and inspiration, Jonathan Gottschall takes a timely and fascinating but possibly forbidding subject and#8212; the new brain science and what it can tell us about the human story-making impulse and#8212; and makes of it an extraordinary and absorbing intellectual narrative. The scrupulous synthesis of art and science here is masterful; the real-world stakes high; the rewards for the reader numerous, exhilarating, mind-expanding."

and#8212;Terry Castle, Walter A. Haas Professor in the Humanities, Stanford University

The classic book on the development of human language by the world's leading expert on language and the mind.

In this classic, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published.

The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America.

Jonathan Gottschall teaches English at Washington and Jefferson College and is one of the leading figures in the movement toward a more scientific humanities. The author or editor of five scholarly books, Gottschalland#8217;s work has been prominently featured in the New York Times Magazine, Scientific American, and the Chronicle of Higher Education, among others. Steven Pinker has called him "a brilliant young scholar" whose writing isandnbsp;"unfailingly clear, witty, and exciting."

The Witchery of Storyand#8195;1

The Riddle of Fictionand#8195;21

Hell Is Story-Friendlyand#8195;45

Night Storyand#8195;68

The Mind Is a Storytellerand#8195;87

The Moral of the Storyand#8195;117

Ink People Change the Worldand#8195;139

Life Storiesand#8195;156

The Future of Storyand#8195;177

Notesand#8195;201

Acknowledgmentsand#8195;213

Bibliographyand#8195;215

Creditsand#8195;231

Indexand#8195;233