Humans live in landscapes of make-believe: we spin fantasies, we devour novels, films, and plays, and even our sporting events and criminal trials unfold as narratives. Yet the world of story has long remained an undiscovered and unmapped country. It’s easy to say that humans are “wired” for story, but why?

In this delightful and original book, Jonathan Gottschall offers the first unified theory of storytelling. He argues that stories are a way of rehearsing life’s complex social problems.Our penchant for story has evolved, like other behaviors, to enhance our survival, and, crucially, that of our social group. (In fact, studies show that people who read fiction are more empathetic.) Gottschall explores the deep pattern in children’s make-believe, and what that reveals about story’s prehistoric origins. He shows how a story was partly responsible for Hitler’s rise, how schizophrenia is an example of the story mind run amok, and how successful fiction is inherently moral. We are master shapers of story. The Storytelling Animal finally reveals how stories shape us.

Jonathan Gottschall teaches English at Washington & Jefferson College and is one of the leading figures in the movement toward a more scientific humanities. The author or editor of five scholarly books, Gottschall’s work has been prominently featured in The New York Times Magazine, Scientific American, and The Chronicle of Higher Education, among others. Steven Pinker has called him "a brilliant young scholar" whose writing is "unfailingly clear, witty, and exciting."