Masters of the planet seeking the origins of human singularity

This science book club pick attempts to answer why we emerged as the dominant species in the homo genus. For a book under 300 pages it sure seemed like a long book. Partly to blame is the dry writing. It's heavy on fossils and minutia on this or that two-million-year-old bone. I read every word of the first third of this book and then skimmed heavily. I was a little late picking up a copy of this and before I received it, I was dipping into another book that touches on the same theme. It's called Sapiens by Yuval Noah Harari. I can tell you from the first 70 pages of Sapiens that it's much better written than this one. Too bad we didn't pick that one instead (although, Sapiens would take a lot longer to read – it's thick). This guy, Tattersall, isn't much of a storyteller, which is what, I, the layman, would appreciate more. And, for the record, Neanderthals aren't ancestors of ours but ancestral cousins. Although, there's enough similarity between Neanderthals and homo sapiens that there was limited interbreeding between them (that could produce fertile offspring). Just a smidge of action there.