Due to a sudden, unexpected passing in the family a few years ago and another more recently and my subsequent (mental) health issues stemming from that, I was unable to download this book in time to review it before it was archived as I did not visit this site for several years after the bereavements. This means I can't leave an accurate reflection of my feelings towards the book as I am unable to read it now and so I am leaving a message of explanation instead.

I am now back to reading and reviewing full time as once considerable time had passed I have found that books have been helping me significantly in terms of my mindset and mental health - this was after having no interest in anything for quite a number of years after the passings.

Anything requested and approved will be read and a decent quality review written and posted to Amazon (where I am a Hall of Famer & Top Reviewer), Goodreads (where I have several thousand friends and the same amount who follow my reviews) and Waterstones (or Barnes & Noble if the publisher is American based). Thank you for the opportunity and apologies for the inconvenience.

I expected so much more from this book. I tend to plod through non-fiction books at a much slower rate than fiction, but this took longer than it should have.
I am fascinated by the concept of altruism. Although it is an easy out, I think there is an episode in the TV series Friends where Phoebe wants to do something for someone else without feeling good about it herself, i.e. not getting something out of it. I have always wondered about the different levels of ease people have with lending time and energy to others, not being a very instinctively helpful person myself.
All of these are good talking points, but since a person's brain activity has not been measured during an altruistic act, the author focuses on lab experiments of rats and how evolution might have impacted what we consider to be altruistic or not.
It is very dry, and the format I read it in did not help. It has a lot of facts, and the author tends to summarize everything at the end of every chapter. I wanted so much more from this topic, and logically it might have been too much to realistically get, but I struggled to make my way through the book and would only recommend it to the more academic-minded of readers. I think that set of people will be able to get to the actual point of the book.
I received an ARC thanks to NetGalley and the publishers, but the review is entirely based on my own reading experience.

The subject matter of this book is fascinating. The presentation was repetitive, and it read like an academic paper. Sorry, but this just isn't for me. DNF at 15%.

Thanks, NetGalley, for the ARC I received. This is my honest and voluntary review.

Very interesting book on altruistic behaviour. The book discusses altruism from various disciplines and points of view and contains many examples for clearance. It's pretty scientific, so not a super easy read, but I learned a lot from it.

I normally love books about science, but Ms. Preston's effort simply did not measure up. Preston asked readers to memorize countless ten-dollar scientific words that will readers to be forever confused. In addition, Ms. Preston only covers one very limited part of the science of altruism, and I was hoping for much more. Unless you are a working researcher who specializes in this topic you are going to be unhappy with The Altruistic Urge.