The Professor in the Cage, Jonathan Gottschall
The Professor in the Cage, Jonathan Gottschall
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The Professor in the Cage
Why Men Fight and Why We Like to Watch

Author: Jonathan Gottschall

Narrator: Quincy Dunn-Baker

Unabridged: 7 hr 45 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Recorded Books

Published: 04/14/2015

Synopsis

When a mixed martial arts (MMA) gym moves in across the street from his office, Jonathan Gottschall sees a challenge, and an opportunity. Pushing forty, out of shape, and disenchanted with his job as an adjunct English professor, part of him yearns to cross the street and join up. The other part is terrified. Gottschall eventually works up his nerve, and starts training for a real cage fight. He's fighting not only as a personal test but also to answer questions that have intrigued him for years: Why do men fight? And why do so many seemingly decent people like to watch? Gottschall endures extremes of pain, occasional humiliation, and the incredulity of his wife to take us into the heart of fighting culture-culminating, after almost two years of grueling training, in his own cage fight. Gottschall's unsparing personal journey crystallizes in his epiphany, and ours, that taming male violence through ritualized combat has been a hidden key to the success of the human race. Without the restraining codes of the monkey dance, the world would be a much more chaotic and dangerous place.

About Jonathan Gottschall

Jonathan Gottschall is the author of The Rape of Troy: Evolution, Violence, and the World of Homer and Literature, Science, and a New Humanities, as well as coeditor of several books, including Graphing Jane Austen and The Literary Animal. His work has been featured widely in the media, including the New York Times magazine, the New York Times, Scientific American Mind, New Scientist, the Chronicle of Higher Education, Nature, Science, BBC Radio and NPR. Jonathan teaches in the English Department at Washington & Jefferson College. He lives with his wife and two daughters in Washington, Pennsylvania.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Jess on February 19, 2019

I can't even. This book is full of pseudoscience and gender stereotypes. Gottschall takes actual science and facts, relies only on nature arguments, discards nurture arguments, then he takes these facts and submerges them in a mixture of good ol' boys and wanna be a real fighter so bads. For example......more

Goodreads review by Reynolds on May 22, 2015

This book was a dried poodle turd. It could've been good, but the guy drones on and on about masculinity and science. I just wanted to hear about your training, bro. If I wanted to read a science book, I wouldn't read one written by an adjunct English comp teacher. I'd read one written by a scientis......more

Goodreads review by Biblio on March 01, 2015

The Professor, Jonathan Gottschall, asks why men like to fight, and in this book he is talking about fighting for sport, or for fun, not war or other life and death battles. While I don't quite get why men like to box or cage fight, I do get that competition is fun and that it's an extreme form of c......more

Goodreads review by Brad on February 08, 2018

The premise is strong, unfortunately this book soon devolves into a Jordan Peterson-esque smorgasbord of soft science and half-baked philosophy. I think this idea would've worked better as a long personal essay, because as a full-length book it demands a rigorous approach to the many topics the auth......more

Goodreads review by Jay on January 04, 2016

Animals fight; humans fight, too. Women fight; men fight, too. But men are more likely to fight physically and frequently. Some might say men are just asinine in so doing and men ought to be civilized. Jonathan Gotschall, an English professor, argues that men are the way they are owing to many reaso......more

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