About this item
A revelatory investigation of human and animal adolescence and young adulthood from the New York Times bestselling authors of Zoobiquity.With Wildhood, Harvard evolutionary biologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz and award-winning science writer Kathryn Bowers have created an entirely new way of thinking about the crucial, vulnerable, and exhilarating phase of life between childhood and adulthood across the animal kingdom. In their critically acclaimed bestseller, Zoobiquity, the authors revealed the essential connection between human and animal health. In Wildhood, they turn the same eye-opening, species-spanning lens to adolescent young adult life. Traveling around the world and drawing from their latest research, they find that the same four universal challenges are faced by every adolescent human and animal on earth: how to be safe, how to navigate hierarchy; how to court potential mates; and how to feed oneself. Safety. Status. Sex. Self-reliance. How human and animal adolescents and young adults confront the challenges of wildhood shapes their adult destinies. Natterson-Horowitz and Bowers illuminate these core challenges through the lives of four animals in the wild: Ursula, a young king penguin; Shrink, a charismatic hyena; Salt, a matriarchal humpback whale; and Slavc, a roaming European wolf. Through their riveting stories - and those of countless others, from adventurous eagles and rambunctious high schooler to inexperienced orcas and naive young soldiers - readers get a vivid and game-changing portrait of adolescent young adults as a horizontal tribe, sharing behaviors and challenges, setbacks and triumphs. Upending our understanding of everything from risk-taking and anxiety to the origins of privilege and the nature of sexual coercion and consent, Wildhood is a profound and necessary guide to the perilous, thrilling, and universal journey to adulthood on planet earth.
About the Author
For twenty years, cardiologist Barbara Natterson-Horowitz has treated human patients at the UCLA Medical Center, developed imaging techniques and lectured to thousands of medical students, residents, fellows, colleagues, and community members. Currently she is cardiac consultant for the Los Angeles Zoo and a member of the Zoo's Medical Advisory Board as well as the Director of Imaging for the UCLA Cardiac Arrhythmia Center. Her outstanding rapport with students has won her numerous teaching awards and made her a popular professor at the David Geffen School of Medicine at UCLA where she lectures about cardiovascular physiology, cardiovascular pharmacology, echocardiography, and bioengineering. Her writing has appeared in many scientific and medical publications.Barbara is a member of the National Evolutionary Synthesis Center (NESCent) Working Group entitled, "Infusing Evolutionary Thinking into Medical Education." With Daniel Blumstein, Chair of the UCLA Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, she created and curated Evolutionary Medicine Month at UCLA (summary here, in the Evolution and Medicine Review) .Barbara earned her bachelor's and master's degrees from Harvard University and received her medical degree from the University of California, San Francisco.She lives in Los Angeles with her husband, two children and two dogs.
