The Grateful Beast

Can evolution tell us why we worship?

Author: Tim DeRoche

Hardcover

Pre order release date
5th January 2026

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Pre order release date
5th January 2026

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Hardcover

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Description

In this beautiful and moving book, bestselling author TimDeRoche makes the case that human beings are hardwired to worship.

Drawing from evolutionary psychology, he argues that wecannot help but experience life as a gift. And, whether we admit it or not, our biological instincts leave usyearning for a right relationship with the unseen giver.

What makes us human? Itis the instinct to give and receive gifts from one another. DeRoche shows how thinkers throughout historyhave obsessed over issues of reciprocity and social obligation: RalphWaldo Emerson, Friedrich Nietzsche, the anthropologist Marcel Mauss, theFreudian psychologist Ernest Becker, and so many more. And these themes echo through the Hebrew andChristian scriptures, which can be read as an extended meditation on what itmeans to be indebted to God for life itself.

The Grateful Beast offers a new take on the plight ofmodern man, urging us to acknowledge the full mystery of life and to accept theweight of infinite gratitude.

About the Author

Tim DeRoche is the bestselling author of The Ballad of Huck & Miguel, a modern-day retelling of Huck Finn set on the Los Angeles River, which was featured on CBS Sunday Morning, NPR, the LA Review of Books, and the Mark Twain Forum. It was also selected by the Pasadena Public Library as the “One City, One Story” book for the Summer of 2019.He also wrote A Fine Line, which was featured in the Washington Post and which launched the national watchdog Available to All. His third book, Tales of Whimsy, Verses of Woe, is a collection of nonsense poetry that received starred reviews from Kirkus and the American Library Association (ALA). He has written for TIME, USA Today, The Free Press, Unherd, and Literary Hub.Tim lives with his wife Simone and four young kids in the Foothills of Los Angeles.