Originally published in 1960 as What We Did to Father, The Evolution Man follows the adventures of the primal horde, led by their inventive genius of a father. Familiar themes of paleoanthropological fiction are treated, although not in the sort of diction that is familiar in the genre: "Good gracious! ... While I have been talking to you, and not even thinking about it, I have made a most important invention: the heavy-duty hunting spear with the fire-hardened point!" "Artfully told and laugh-out-loud funny", writes the reviewer for the Los Angeles Times Book Review.