|| 4 ⭐️ ||

Fascinating study of discomfort through the ages and how it leads to human resilience, combined with a memoir of the author’s extreme, month-long hunting trip in rough Alaska. I learned a lot about how various discomforts benefit us, such as silence, physical exertion, boredom, weather extremes, etc. His thoughts on each of these topics was intriguing, and he interviewed knowledgeable people in each of the fields to enhance and broaden our understanding. I leave this book with a desire to allow discomfort into my comfortable modern life a little more often than I currently do, now that I have some more specific ideas to focus on.

The downside to this book is of course that the author writes from an evolutionary perspective, which bleeds into much of his research. I also recall not necessarily agreeing with some of the chapters on hunger and food, but I’m used to that. I just found the heavy emphasis on fibre kind of strange considering the ancestors he so often referred to for everything else tended to consume more animal food than plant food (though most people groups were still omnivores to an extent, climate allowing).