Cassell buys Cregan-Reid on 'primate change'

Cassell has acquired Primate Change, a "polemical look at how and why the human body has changed since humankind first got up on two feet", by author and academic Vybarr Cregan-Reid. The book is already being adapted for a three-part series on the BBC World Service. 

Romilly Morgan, commissioning editor at Octopus, acquired world rights from Jane Graham Maw at Graham Maw Christie to publish on 20th September as a £16.99 hardback.

According to Octopus the book will span the entirety of human history to investigate "where we came from, who we are today and how modern life is changing us inside and out". It looks at how our ways of living is altering the expression of our DNA, which Cregan-Reid. argues has evolved expecting a different environment from the one we have made in the last two hundred years. 

Cregan-Reid, who teaches at the University of Kent, last published Footnotes: How Running Makes us Human with Ebury in 2016.

He commented: "Part of the joy of researching and writing a book like Primate Change has been witnessing the urgency of the subject matter every time I walk down a street, see someone shift in their seat, or put on some glasses to read something. The environment is all around us, and this book threads together the ways in which it is a powerful agent in determining our health, wellbeing, and even changing our appearance. This is a book that gets to the very crux of what it is to be a modern human - we all have bodies, after all." 

Morgan said: “Primate Change opens with the sentence ‘If you think you are you, think again’ and I challenge anyone to feel the same way about themselves and/or the lives they lead after reading it. It truly is an important and urgent book and one I feel incredibly privileged to publish.”