A review by wordfey
Cafe Neandertal: Excavating Our Past in One of Europe's Most Ancient Places by Beebe Bahrami

2.0

I picked up this book because I wanted to know more about current work on Neandertals. What I got was a travel memoir with about ten pages' worth of actual data sandwiched between massive spreads of scenery fluffed with dialogue. The reviewer who said this was like "Eat Pray Love" isn't far off: like that author, this one exoticizes and stereotypes nearly everything. (She's SO Thai! They're SO Spanish! OMG France is adorbs!) Neandertals are treated like spiritual advisers on some kind of paleoquest (one of her chapters is literally titled "A Different Sort of Pilgrimage"). And hey, if that's your thing, this book is for you. It certainly wasn't for me.