🧲 Books like this
The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation
Matt Ridley · back to the book
What’s in it
Tap a tag: ❤ = this matters to me · tap again ✕ = don’t care · again to reset. The list below updates each time.
24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorSapiens: A Brief History of Humankind
Yuval Noah Harari · 456 pages
From a renowned historian comes a groundbreaking narrative of humanity’s creation and evolution—a #1 international bestseller—that explores the ways in which biology and history have defined us and enhanced our understanding of what it means to be “human.” One hundred thousand years ago, at least six different species of humans inhabited Earth. Yet today there is only one—homo sapiens. What hap
The Selfish Gene
Richard Dawkins · 352 pages
As influential today as when it was first published, The Selfish Gene has become a classic exposition of evolutionary thought. Professor Dawkins articulates a gene's eye view of evolution - a view giving centre stage to these persistent units of information, and in which organisms can be seen as vehicles for their replication. This imaginative, powerful, and stylistically brilliant work not only b
Demonic Males: Apes and the Origins of Human Violence
Richard W. Wrangham, Dale Peterson · 350 pages
Whatever their virtues, men are more violent than women. Why do men kill, rape, and wage war, and what can we do about it? Drawing on the latest discoveries about human evolution and about our closest living relatives, the great apes, Demonic Males offers some startling new answers. Dramatic, vivid, and firmly grounded in meticulous research, this book will change the way you see the world.
The Bonobo and the Atheist: In Search of Humanism Among the Primates
Frans de Waal · 304 pages
A renowned primatologist argues that ethical behavior witnessed in animals is the evolutionary and biological origin of human fairness and explains that morality has more to do with natural instincts than with religion.
Parasite Rex: Inside the Bizarre World of Nature's Most Dangerous Creatures
Carl Zimmer · 298 pages
A look inside the often hidden world of parasites turns the clock back to the beginning of life on Earth to answer key questions about these highly evolved and resilient life forms.
The Beak of the Finch: A Story of Evolution in Our Time
Jonathan Weiner · 332 pages
On a desert island in the heart of the Galapagos archipelago, where Darwin received his first inklings of the theory of evolution, two scientists, Peter and Rosemary Grant, have spent twenty years proving that Darwin did not know the strength of his own theory. For among the finches of Daphne Major, natural selection is neither rare nor slow: it is taking place by the hour, and we can watch. In
Dr. Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation
Olivia Judson · 320 pages
Do your genitals explode? Are you 200,000 times smaller than your mate? Do you drug your lover with a potion that keeps her faithful? You may not get up to such tricks, but some creatures do: sex is one of the most powerful forces in nature, and generates an astounding diversity of forms and behaviors. But why? Dr Tatiana's Sex Advice to All Creation explores the science of sex, considering eve
The Seven Daughters of Eve: The Science That Reveals Our Genetic Ancestry
Bryan Sykes · 319 pages
"In 1994 Professor Bryan Sykes, a leading world authority on DNA and human evolution, was called in to examine the frozen remains of a man trapped in glacial ice in northern Italy. News of the discovery of the Ice Man and his age, which was put at over five thousand years, fascinated the world. But what made the story particularly extraordinary was that Professor Sykes was also able to track down
Why Is Sex Fun? The Evolution of Human Sexuality
Jared Diamond · 176 pages
The Expression of the Emotions in Man and Animals
Charles Darwin · 373 pages
The Meme Machine
Susan Blackmore · 264 pages
After Richard Dawkins' *The Selfish Gene*, Susan Blackmore drive us deeply into the theory of the meme, social and cultural "replicators", trying to explain the human unique ability to imitate. Altruism, ideas, human behaviours, sex, poetry, music... seems to be simply the result of such as memetic selection... > Even our inner conscious self and our sense of free will are illlusion created by
Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live
Marlene Zuk · 328 pages
Debunks beliefs based on the assumption that human beings have finished evolving and defends the assertion that modern man is not biologically the same as our caveman ancestors.
Why Darwin Matters: The Case Against Intelligent Design
Michael Shermer · 211 pages
Wonderful Life: The Burgess Shale and the Nature of History
Stephen Jay Gould · 350 pages
The Genius of Birds
Jennifer Ackerman · 346 pages
"Birds are astonishingly intelligent creatures. In fact, according to revolutionary new research, some birds rival primates and even humans in their remarkable forms of intelligence. Like humans, many birds have enormous brains relative to their size. Although small, bird brains are packed with neurons that allow them to punch well above their weight. In The Genius of Birds, acclaimed author Jenni
How the Mind Works
Steven Pinker · 661 pages
"Presented with extraordinary lucidity, cogency and panache...Powerful and gripping...To have read [the book] is to have consulted a first draft of the structural plan of the human psyche...a glittering tour de force" - Spectator "Why do memories fade? Why do we lose our tempers? Why do fools fall in love? Pinker's objective in this erudite account is to explore the nature and history of the human
Before the Dawn: Recovering the Lost History of Our Ancestors
Nicholas Wade · 313 pages
Nicholas Wade's articles are a major reason why the science section has become the most popular, nationwide, in the New York Times. In his groundbreaking Before the Dawn, Wade reveals humanity's origins as never before—a journey made possible only recently by genetic science, whose incredible findings have answered such questions as: What was the first human language like? How large were the first
Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life
Daniel C. Dennett · 586 pages
In this groundbreaking and very accessible book, Daniel C. Dennett, the acclaimed author of Consciousness Explained, demonstrates the power of the theory of natural selection and shows how Darwin's great idea transforms and illuminates our traditional view of our place in the universe. Following Darwinian thinking to its logical conclusions is a risky business, with pitfalls for everybody. Creati
The Naked Ape: A Zoologist's Study of the Human Animal
Desmond Morris · 219 pages
Dans la même optique et avec le même vocabulaire que celui utilisé pour les animaux, une observation du comportement humain sous l'angle de la sexualité, de l'éducation, de la combativité et de la recherche du confort où le zoologiste démontre avec humour que l'homme est toujours un singe.
Written in Stone: Evolution, the Fossil Record, and Our Place in Nature
Brian Switek · 320 pages
This book is about the epic quest for missing links and other myths about evolution. The author proposes that the strides made in paleontology have helped with understanding evolution, and discusses how fossils, prominent scientists, technology, and other factors have each influenced the theory's development.
The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology
Robert Wright · 496 pages
The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution
Sean B. Carroll · 304 pages