Reviewing Kindred presented me with an interesting challenge: the book's social media profile—both prior to and since publication—and hugely positive reception meant that I opened it with a wealth of expectations. I am delighted to say that Kindred meets all of them. As others have commented already, it is a beautifully, distinctively written tribute to the realities of Neanderthals, which will introduce them to a wide audience and challenge many resilient stereotypes. But what is especially impressive is that this reaching out is not done at the expense of facts, details, and nuance—an achievement that reflects Wragg Sykes's doctoral and postdoctoral backgrounds.

Kindred consists of 16 chapters, covering Neanderthal origins (in terms of their history of research and biological evolution), different facets of their day-to-day life (e.g., technologies, diet, life at the fireside, and out in the landscape), mortuary practices, and genetic legacy. The connections between these chapters are excellent, contributing to the book's holistic treatment of Neanderthal life and death. While covering these varied specialist topics, Wragg Sykes achieves a mostly very successful balance between key examples (with enough detail for students and researchers to pursue them further) and the broader significance of the issues. Major sites (e.g., Abric Romaní in Spain) are used to illustrate points across multiple chapters, and this structuring device is very effective.

A personal favorite of mine is Chapter 8, which reviews Neanderthal diet, demonstrates how old preconceptions have been challenged and rejected, and shows how dietary discussions extend far beyond what was eaten into wider issues such as Neanderthal social life. However, it is unfair to pick out specific chapters here because all contribute significantly to the book as a whole. What is particularly impressive throughout is that Wragg Sykes avoids the pitfalls of discussing Neanderthals in terms of Homo sapiens (in effect, in terms of what they were not). Instead, Kindred presents Neanderthals on their own terms (e.g., in their complex, varied approaches to death), and there are numerous points that highlight the complex, heterogeneous nature of the Middle Paleolithic world (e.g., that Neanderthals from northwestern Europe might have turned their noses up at the foods eaten by those in the eastern Mediterranean).

In striking a balance between overview and academic detail, Wragg Sykes provides a comprehensive, twenty-first-century view of Neanderthals, and she is impressively up-to-date on a wide range of recent developments (e.g., Neanderthal symbolic behaviors and paleogenetics) while also explaining how and why views have changed. Read in comparison with In Search of the Neanderthals (Christopher Stringer and Clive Gamble, 1993) or, to a lesser extent, Neanderthals Rediscovered (Dimitra Papagianni and Michael Morse, 2013), Kindred conveys the pace of change in Neanderthal studies over the last 30 years. Scattered throughout the book are fascinating background details (e.g., of nineteenth-century excavations) that should interest specialists and general readers alike, as will the comparisons with later prehistoric and historic periods (e.g., a 500-year-old Alaskan reindeer-hunting site in Chapter 10). Wragg Sykes also presents important perspectives on both the value of archaeology in the present (a pressing current concern) and its practice: Chapter 16, in particular, raises a number of issues of relevance to decolonizing archaeology.

Kindred is perhaps a little dense in places for some nonspecialists (e.g., when discussing Neanderthal technologies in Chapters 6 and 7), but Wragg Sykes always emphasizes the wider implications and significance of the evidence. Moreover, her measured use of detailed examples refutes those occasionally encountered and lazy accusations that early prehistory is all guesswork, and she stresses the range and precision of modern analytical methods and the critical role of taphonomy. Aspects of the book are inevitably more speculative (e.g., when discussing birthing issues), but they are still grounded in what is known from the archaeological record, and they draw on the ethnography and archaeology of hunter-gatherers and on primatological research where appropriate.

Kindred benefits from some excellent illustrations (especially the chapter headpieces), and the map of sites (front endpaper) and schematic of genetic relationships (endpaper) are both very useful. The text could have benefited from more figures in places (e.g., when discussing organic and compositive technologies in Chapter 7). The color plates could perhaps have been more clearly linked to the text, and some of them made larger for clarity and visibility (this was one of the few aspects of the book's presentation that was slightly disappointing).

Overall, Kindred is a hugely impressive blend of engaging writing and academic detail, which eloquently conveys the very latest thinking of what it was to be a Neanderthal and why they matter to us today. As a book reviewer in an academic post, I can think of no higher compliment than to note that I learned many things I did not previously know, and that I am recommending Kindred to my students at all levels.