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This is not only the best book I've read on human origins, but lands in the top five of all science writing I've encountered as well. Shreeve is clever enough to know that science is first and foremost a human endeavor, and accompanied by the same pride, vanity, competitiveness and genius as any other pursuit. He uses this to make the scientists he profiles here entirely relatable.

All this is greatly enhanced by his instincts as a writer. He begins the book in a crowded French cafe, packed with people who've been chased inside by the rain. His companion pulls a piece of skull out of his backpack, unswaddles it from the t-shirts it's wrapped in, and pointedly ignores it for twenty minutes while making idle chitchat with the author, stirring his coffee, eating his croissant. Strangers pressed in around them gradually take notice, but being cool people, try to pretend to ignore it. Snack completed, he picks the skull up, points out some interesting anatomical features, and coolness gives way to undisguised curiosity as people start jamming their way across the cafe to eavesdrop. A brilliant opening.

From the beginning, Neanderthals have sparked controversy. "If this is the earliest man," opines one researcher in the 1800's, "then the earliest man was a freak." The Neanderthal-as-idiot camp is led by the Frenchman Broule, while the English and Italians point to its larger-than-modern-human braincase and controversial evidence of gentleness within the tribes. Though much has been learned since, there are still those who consider them gentle creatures wiped out by bloodthirsty H. sapiens sapiens. Others write off their family structure as 'cave-bound females and visiting firemen.' ("He goes too far," splutters a Frenchman, as the tables have now turned and the French are pro-Neaderthal, "this.....this I simply cannot believe".)

So with all the internecine bickering keeping it fun, he sneaks in enormous amounts of erudition, starting with methods of classical anthropology, which involves everything from earthmovers to tweezers, and moving on to 'parsimony trees' of genetic evolution. Here, now, is where the real fights start -- between the sunburnt crews picking through old bones vs. pasty, fluorescently-lit Harvard and Berkeley scientists typing up software -- software! to understand Neanderthals!-- to work backwards from living populations.

This is all great fun, and I learned a whole hell of a lot, and I love this book.