On the Origins of Tepees: The Evolution of Ideas (and Ourselves)

Hughes, an award-winning science writer and documentary maker, explores how big ideas begin, evolve, and converge%E2%80%94and whether culture, like biology, follows any Darwinian dictates of natural selection%E2%80%94in this detective story%E2%80%93cum%E2%80%93road trip memoir. Hughes and his brother, Adam, trek across America in their Chrysler in order to trace the evolution of tepees used by the Plains Indians%E2%80%94that "marvel of human ingenuity... the difference between life and death." Along the way, Hughes maps out the genealogies of other cultural artifacts of Americana%E2%80%94the gambrel-roof barn, bourbon whiskey, regional pronunciations and jokes, why Scandinavian immigrants took to the American Midwest, and the invention of the cowboy hat. Taking his cue from Darwin, Hughes intersperses his technical discussions of genetics and biology with sketches%E2%80%94of tepees and such oddities of the animal kingdom as naked mole rats, hammerhead fruit bats, oarfish%E2%80%94and snapshots from the road that keep the reading brisk, personal, and pleasurable. This ambitious book braids together studies in biology, psychology, history, linguistics, geology, and philosophy into an impressively succinct and readable taxonomy of human culture. (Aug.)