What kind of creature is a human? If we don’t know what we are, how can we know how to act? In Being a Human Charles Foster sets out to understand what a human is, inhabiting the sensory worlds of humans at three pivotal moments in our history.

We’re in a mess. All of us. Politically, economically, environmentally, psychologically, spiritually. Why? Because we have no remotely adequate story. We’re highly complex beings, and yet the commonly available stories tell us that we are mere machines (the scientific story) or economic units (the western political story). Both stories are insulting. We’re so much more.

But what are we? And what stories should we tell ourselves about ourselves? If we don’t know what we are, and in what story we have roles, how can we know how to act and how to thrive?

To find out what we are we need to go back to the origins: to find out where we’re from. There are far, far better stories than the ones we’re fed. We deserve better. Those stories are old stories. You’ve got to go back to the plains and the woods where, as a species, we were born, and to feel which of the stories is the right one. Charles Foster did. He went back into the Upper Palaeolithic, when we first acquired the sorts of brains we now have. He learned the old stories of connectivity; of intimate relationship with everything: the stories that work for a world where everything is conscious. And then he traced the fate of those stories. What happened to them in the Neolithic, when we carved up the natural world, and tamed and fenced ourselves? What happened in the Enlightenment, when the universe was drained of meaning?

To find a way forward, we need to find a way back to better, bigger stories of who we are.

‘A wild ride: brave, outrageous, hilarious, helpful, and urgent. Foster has no time for decaying paradigms; he tunnels underneath their crumbling foundations with a pickaxe to help them on their way. Being a Human will deepen and expand your sense of self. Essential reading’.

– Merlin Sheldrake, author of Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds, & Shape Our Futures

‘Few of us have given much thought to the dazzling human journey from hunter-gatherer to now. In a 40,000 year odyssey fizzing with masterful revelation, Professor Foster makes us relive our nature-centric past, shows us how much we have lost and makes us startlingly aware of who we really are.’ Sir John Lister Kaye

‘Profound, erudite, provocative and funny, this outrageously brilliant and wise book is a challenge to the reductive materialism that dominates current understandings of the human animal—and the natural world. Foster draws on his empathy with the animist Palaeolithic to argue for a return to non-dogmatic forms of Enlightenment values that might take seriously the affective dimension of human nature and experience—to recover ‘enchantment’ and express the ‘vertiginous wonder of the world’. Steve Ely

‘Only someone fairly mad – possessed of a sensorial imagination verging on clairvoyance, an alarming appetite for physical duress, and an uncanny gift for wyrding his way into other shapes of sentience – would undertake such an impossible endeavor, dropping down and down into the depths within, spelunking in his soul’s bone hollows, stirring up old, old ghosts in order to discover how thoroughly haunted our present existence really is’. David Abram

‘A daredevil read. Once again, Charles Foster has journeyed to places most of us wouldn’t dare; and emerged with a book that is passionate and kind, deeply intelligent and uproariously funny.’ Helen Jukes

“More turned-down page corners than any other recent book on my shelves. A brilliant, inventive, and unsettling exploration of our glorious and broken nature. Foster’s work shakes us out of dozy estrangement from our own humanity and welcomes us into the mysteries of belonging.”

David George Haskell, author of Pulitzer finalist, The Forest Unseen, and Burroughs Medalist, The Songs of Trees. Professor, University of the South.

‘Being a Human is a work of shaggy genius. Its subject is
gargantuan in scale; its humour has a reckless panache; its
argument is brilliantly original and above all it is written
with a matchless audacity of soul. It is one of the most
important books I have ever read’ Jay Griffiths, author of
Why Rebel? and Wild: An Elemental Journey

‘I’ll read anything Charles Foster writes, and this is his most
ambitious book yet. It is a historical investigation, a short
story collection, a humour primer, a sheaf of scientific
papers and a work of philosophy all rolled into one, with a
side helping of religious ecstasy and badger shit. It will tell
you many things you didn’t know about who you are. You
should read it’ Paul Kingsnorth, author of The Wake

‘Being a Human is one of the most original inquiries into the
who, what and why of human existence to appear in recent
years. Charles Foster writes with inspiring brilliance,
originality and simplicity. I love this book. It should be
widely read, for the benefit of all us humans’ Larry Dossey,
author of One Mind: How Our Individual Mind Is Part of a
Greater Consciousness and Why It Matters

‘Monstrously great: book of the year from where I’m
sitting. But I’m not sitting, I’m up and waving my arms
about for the sustained achievement of this magical,
brilliant thing. Being a Human contains a hundred things we
desperately need to know. Hugely moving, filled with
intelligence, it scurries between centuries with us between
its teeth. Charles Foster has invoked a living presence in
these pages, a contract with the uncanny. To know a thing
about the future we need to retrace our steps into our old
mind. We could start here’ Martin Shaw, author of Smoke
Hole: Looking to the Wild in the Time of the Spyglass

‘A fascinating book of immense scope and proportions …
The evolution of the mind makes for a labyrinthine
investigation worthy of Sherlock Holmes’ James Crowden,
author of The Frozen River: Seeking Silence in the Himalaya

‘What a mad, brilliant, mind-expanding book. Being a
Human offers a thrilling deep dive through our evolutionary
past, and a witty and learned commentary on why we are
the way we are – and what wisdom we’ve lost along the
way. Foster is a true modern polymath who writes with wit,
humour and heart: I’ll be pressing this book into other
people’s hands’ Cal Flyn, author of Islands of Abandonment:
Life in the Post-Human Landscape

‘Charles Foster has created a book of immense, deeply felt
intelligence. This book is a startling reset on our
understanding of the journey of human thought.
Approaching the question from a totally new perspective of
lived experience, Foster shows us how we came to be the
people we are, with the values we exert in the world. Not
only are the revelations startling, but the metaphoric power
of Foster’s language is frequently astonishing. I wish I’d
written this book, and that’s my highest praise’ Carl Safina,
author of Becoming Wild: How Animals Learn to be Animals

‘Charles Foster has written the unwritable – gifting us a
perspective-tumbling insight into other worlds. Being a
Human is both challenging and entertaining. By the time
you have finished reading it you will not look in the mirror
and see quite the same person as before’ Hugh Warwick,
author of Linescapes: Remapping and Reconnecting Britain’s
Fragmented Wildlife

‘Profound, erudite, provocative and funny, this
outrageously brilliant and wise book is a challenge to the
reductive materialism that dominates current
understandings of the human animal – and the natural
world. Foster draws on his empathy with the animist
Palaeolithic to argue for a return to non-dogmatic forms of
Enlightenment values that might take seriously the affective
dimension of human nature and experience – to recover
“enchantment” and express the “vertiginous wonder of the
world” … Wildly eccentric and ranging widely, but always
in control’ Steve Ely, author of Englaland

‘Few of us have given much thought to the dazzling human
journey from hunter–gatherer to now. In a forty-thousandyear
odyssey fizzing with masterful revelation, Professor
Foster makes us relive our nature-centric past, shows us
how much we have lost and makes us startlingly aware of
who we really are’ Sir John Lister-Kaye OBE, author of The
Dun Cow Rib: A Very Natural Childhood

‘More turned-down page corners than any other recent
book on my shelves. A brilliant, inventive and unsettling
exploration of our glorious and broken nature. Foster’s
work shakes us out of dozy estrangement from our own
humanity and welcomes us into the mysteries of belonging
… Its richness demands careful reading’ David George
Haskell, Pulitzer finalist author of The Forest Unseen: A Year’s
Watch in Nature

‘Only someone fairly mad – possessed of a sensorial
imagination verging on clairvoyance, an alarming appetite
for physical duress and an uncanny gift for wyrding his way
into other shapes of sentience – would undertake such an
impossible endeavour, dropping down and down into the
depths within, spelunking in his soul’s bone hollows,
stirring up old, old ghosts in order to discover how
thoroughly haunted our present existence really is’ David
Abram, author of Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology

‘No one else could tackle the whole of human evolution,
the history and implications of our “inadequate mutations”,
with such wit and elegance. Being a Human is both
panoramic and intimate: an experiment in living, a
manifesto, a brilliant synthesis, a conversation you’d have in
a pub after hours of walking on a wind-scoured moor.
Brace yourselves for a thrilling encounter with the other,
with the marvellous, terrifying spectacle of the self. This
book will leave you changed: both wiser and more
bewildered. Which is to say more alive’ Helen Mort, author
of Division Street

‘An exhilarating book that asks all the big questions about
our past, present and future, Being a Human contributes to
the growing field of literature that tasks us with thinking,
and behaving, like Earthlings. That Foster has managed to
produce this clarion call for “a vibrant scientific mysticism”
whilst being funny and entertaining is little short of a
marvel’ Gregory Norminton, author of The Devil’s Highway