Gestures: Their Origins And Distribution
Condition: SECONDHAND
This is a secondhand book. The jacket image is a photograph of the exact copy we have in stock. This image shows the condition of this book. Further condition remarks are below.
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
A fascinating journey into the silent language of the human body, Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution presents a landmark scientific study into twenty specific hand and body gestures, tracing their meanings, histories, and geographic spread across Europe and beyond. Led by the renowned zoologist and author Desmond Morris, alongside a team of researchers from the University of Oxford, this ambitious work maps the rich and often surprising variations in gestural communication — revealing how a single movement can signal friendship in one culture and grave insult in another. Rooted in meticulous fieldwork conducted across forty locations in twenty-five countries, the book argues that gestures are not merely incidental to human communication but are deeply embedded cultural artifacts, shaped by centuries of history, migration, and social evolution. Morris and his co-authors bring a rigorous yet accessible analytical lens to the subject, combining anthropological theory with vivid real-world observation. A work that permanently altered how scholars and general readers alike understand non-verbal communication, it leaves one wondering: how many messages are we sending — and misreading — every single day?
Author: Desmond Morris, Peter Collett, Peter Marsh, Marie O'Shaughnessy
Format: Hardback
Genre: Anthropology
Condition remarks:
Book: Good
Jacket: Worn/faded, no tears
Pages: Good
A fascinating journey into the silent language of the human body, Gestures: Their Origins and Distribution presents a landmark scientific study into twenty specific hand and body gestures, tracing their meanings, histories, and geographic spread across Europe and beyond. Led by the renowned zoologist and author Desmond Morris, alongside a team of researchers from the University of Oxford, this ambitious work maps the rich and often surprising variations in gestural communication — revealing how a single movement can signal friendship in one culture and grave insult in another. Rooted in meticulous fieldwork conducted across forty locations in twenty-five countries, the book argues that gestures are not merely incidental to human communication but are deeply embedded cultural artifacts, shaped by centuries of history, migration, and social evolution. Morris and his co-authors bring a rigorous yet accessible analytical lens to the subject, combining anthropological theory with vivid real-world observation. A work that permanently altered how scholars and general readers alike understand non-verbal communication, it leaves one wondering: how many messages are we sending — and misreading — every single day?