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Ok. I did not read this book. So why am I posting it as read? To remind myself not to check it out again.

The title of the book, The Age of Empathy: Nature's Lessons for a Kinder Society, caught my attention. Empathy is certainly a characteristic that demands our attention in an increasingly non-empathetic world. My expectation was to find a rich source of study on empathy, qualitative engagement on how to raise levels of empathetic awareness, and yes a bit of how-the-animal-kingdom-does-it-better-than-us pandering. I was okay with that.

As is my habit, I tend to first read the preface or introduction to get a feel if I like that author's style of writing or if I can tolerate 200 plus pages of it. The preface gives me a gauge. If not red flags, I jump right in. If red flags, I do a chapter by chapter browse to see if the preface climate is a theme. That was the case here.

On the back cover the publisher states that the author writes with a wealth of anecdotes, wry humor, and incisive intelligence. What I discovered were subtle and not-so-subtle political sniping and positioning, aggrandizement of animal behavior and the trivialization of human behavior, and a steady wave of arguments against anthropomorphic phrases commonly (albeit invalid) applied to human behavior.

Had I read this book, I would have had to turn off my brain and ignore all these factors and other blatant agenda-oriented references. Using anecdotal references and observational science to declare the empathetic decline of humanity just doesn't fly.