Dinner with a Cannibal: The Complete History of Mankind’s Oldest Taboo

Presenting the history of cannibalism in concert with human evolution, Dinner with a Cannibal takes its readers on an astonishing trip around the world and through history, examining its subject from every angle in order to paint the incredible, multifaceted panoply that is the reality of cannibalism. At the heart of Carole A. Travis-Henikoff’s book is the question of how cannibalism began with the human species and how it has become an unspeakable taboo today. At a time when science is being battered by religions and failing teaching methods, Dinner with a Cannibal presents slices of multiple sciences in a readable, understandable form nested within a wealth of data. With history, paleoanthropology, science, gore, sex, murder, war, culinary tidbits, medical facts, and anthropology filling its pages, Dinner with a Cannibal presents both the light and dark side of the human story; the story of how we came to be all the things we are today.

Carole A. Travis-Henikoff is an author, businesswoman, rancher, and independent scholar specializing in paleoanthropology--the study of human origins. She has given lectures on paleoanthropology at Loyola University (Chicago) and Rush University Medical Center (Chicago), and sits on the board of directors for the Stone Age Institute. She worked with the Getty Conservation team on the preservation of artifacts at the Egyptian Museum in Cairo, Egypt, and participated in an archeological dig alongside J. Desmond Clark, Tim White, Nicholas Toth, and Kathy Schick under the auspices of the Institute of Human Origins. She divides her time between Chicago, Illinois, and Jackson Hole, Wyoming.