An insightful and breathtaking exploration of humanity's evolutionary baggage that explains some of our species' greatest successes and failures. --Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens

The ancient inheritance that made us who we are--and is now driving us to ruin.

Each of us is endowed with an inheritance--a set of evolved biases and cultural tools that shape every facet of our behavior. For countless generations, this inheritance has taken us to ever greater heights: driving the rise of more sophisticated technologies, more organized religions, more expansive empires. But now, for the first time, it's failing us. We find ourselves hurtling toward a future of unprecedented political polarization, deadlier war, and irreparable environmental destruction.

In Inheritance, renowned anthropologist Harvey Whitehouse offers a sweeping account of how our biases have shaped humanity's past and imperil its future. He argues that three biases--conformism, religiosity, and tribalism--drive human behavior everywhere. Forged by natural selection and harnessed by thousands of years of cultural evolution, these biases catalyzed the greatest transformations in human history, from the birth of agriculture and the arrival of the first kings to the rise and fall of human sacrifice and the creation of multiethnic empires. Taking us deep into modern-day tribes, including terrorist cells and predatory ad agencies, Whitehouse shows how, as we lose the cultural scaffolding that allowed us to manage our biases, the world we've built is spiraling out of control.

By uncovering how human nature has shaped our collective history, Inheritance unveils a surprising new path to solving our most urgent modern problems. The result is a powerful reappraisal of the human journey, one that transforms our understanding of who we are, and who we could be.

An entertaining and enlightening deep dive into the alcohol-soaked origins of civilization--and the evolutionary roots of humanity's appetite for intoxication (Daniel E. Lieberman, author of Exercised).

While plenty of entertaining books have been written about the history of alcohol and other intoxicants, none have offered a comprehensive, convincing answer to the basic question of why humans want to get high in the first place.

Drunk elegantly cuts through the tangle of urban legends and anecdotal impressions that surround our notions of intoxication to provide the first rigorous, scientifically-grounded explanation for our love of alcohol. Drawing on evidence from archaeology, history, cognitive neuroscience, psychopharmacology, social psychology, literature, and genetics, Drunk shows that our taste for chemical intoxicants is not an evolutionary mistake, as we are so often told. In fact, intoxication helps solve a number of distinctively human challenges: enhancing creativity, alleviating stress, building trust, and pulling off the miracle of getting fiercely tribal primates to cooperate with strangers. Our desire to get drunk, along with the individual and social benefits provided by drunkenness, played a crucial role in sparking the rise of the first large-scale societies. We would not have civilization without intoxication.

From marauding Vikings and bacchanalian orgies to sex-starved fruit flies, blind cave fish, and problem-solving crows, Drunk is packed with fascinating case studies and engaging science, as well as practical takeaways for individuals and communities. The result is a captivating and long overdue investigation into humanity's oldest indulgence--one that explains not only why we want to get drunk, but also how it might actually be good for us to tie one on now and then.

In the tradition of the best immersive journalism. -A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically

A bold examination of how Paleolithic wisdom could solve our 21st century problems

Jessica Carew Kraft, an urban wife and mom of two, was firmly rooted in the modern world, complete with a high-powered career in tech and the sneaking suspicion that her lifestyle was preventing her and her family from truly thriving. Determined to find a better way, Jessica quit her job and set out to learn about rewilding from people who reject the comforts and convenience of civilization by using ancient tools and skills to survive. Along the way, she learned how to turn sticks into fire, stones into axes, and bones into tools for harvesting wild food--and found an entire community walking the path back from our technology-focused, anxiety-ridden way of life to a simpler, more human experience.

Weaving deep research and reportage with her own personal journey, Jessica tells the remarkable story of the potential benefits rewilding has for us and our planet, and questions what it truly means to be a human in today's world. For readers of A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century and Hunt, Gather, Parent, Why We Need to Be Wild is a thought-provoking, unforgettable narrative that illuminates how we survived in the past, how we live now, and how each of us can choose to thrive in the years ahead.

Kraft shows us how we could all benefit from being a little less civilized. --Tiffany Shlain, author of 24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week

We are living through the most prosperous age in all of human history, yet we are listless, divided, and miserable. Wealth and comfort are unparalleled, but our political landscape is unmoored, and rates of suicide, lone­liness, and chronic illness continue to skyrocket. How do we explain the gap between these truths? And how should we respond?

For evolutionary biologists Heather Heying and Bret Weinstein, the cause of our troubles is clear: the accelerat­ing rate of change in the modern world has outstripped the capacity of our brains and bodies to adapt. We evolved to live in clans, but today many people don't even know their neighbors' names. In our haste to discard outdated gender roles, we increasingly deny the flesh-and-blood realities of sex--and its ancient roots. The cognitive dissonance spawned by trying to live in a society we are not built for is killing us.

In this book, Heying and Weinstein draw on decades of their work teaching in college classrooms and explor­ing Earth's most biodiverse ecosystems to confront today's pressing social ills--from widespread sleep deprivation and dangerous diets to damaging parenting styles and back­ward education practices. Asking the questions many mod­ern people are afraid to ask, A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century outlines a science-based worldview that will empower you to live a better, wiser life.

Every zombie movie has a terrifying underlying message. The enemy isn't supernatural or an alien from another planet. The enemy is . . . us! The undead -- mutated humans, grotesque versions of their previous selves -- are destroying everything in their path and bringing about the downfall of civilization. Even worse, they are contagious, gradually absorbing the few survivors left into the hoard.

In Spiteful Mutants, evolutionary psychologist Edward Dutton argues that we are experiencing a zombie apocalypse of our own. The critical threat to civilization is not so much enemies abroad as it is nihilistic and self-destructive tendencies within our own populations. Dutton examines such salient social phenomena through a Darwinian lens: from BLM to QAnon; from those seeking sexual transformation to the Incels who don't have sex at all; from atheists to those with a religious zeal for social justice. All these phenomena can best be understood as genetic results of the Industrial Revolution.

Human evolution is an ongoing process. The question of who we, as a species, will become is a matter of who is being selected for in a particular ecology. Before industrialization, child mortality was the crucible of evolution: those who were physically and mentally sick -- that is, who possessed high levels of genetic mutation -- rarely survived into adulthood. The Industrial Revolution, and resultant medical advances, brought about the collapse of child mortality, allowing the explosive growth of people who are highly mutated in body and mind, and who would not have otherwise survived. These mutants, walking among us, are spiteful in the sense that they actively affect the functioning of the group. They generate polarization and chaos, depravity and dysphoria, and even the gradual collapse of fertility. A new specter is haunting the industrialized world, the specter of Spiteful Mutants, a menace of our own making.

Dr. Frank Salter

Formerly of the Max Planck Institute

The acclaimed sequel to the international bestseller Flow: an intelligent, inspiring guide to unlocking the evolutionary history of our present consciousness, and becoming at one with the power that is the universe.

A book of singular importance and timeliness, one with momentous implications for the future.-- Howard Gardner

In Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi's bestselling Flow, he introduced readers to a radical new theory of happiness. Now in The Evolving Self--his breakthrough sequel--he demonstrates how we can understand and overcome our evolutionary shortcomings. Premised on the idea that only through a reckoning with our evolutionary past can we build a stable, meaningful future, The Evolving Self covers the challenges associated with our cognitive evolutionary history (As far as controlling the mind is concerned, we are like a novice driver behind the wheel of a racing car); the distortions of reality we experience due to genes, culture, and our sense of self; and the central importance of flow from an evolutionary perspective as we look toward the future.

Erudite, perceptive, and insightful--and more important now than ever, as our consciousnesses are increasingly mediated by electronic devices--The Evolving Self is a timely resource for anyone looking to improve our world for ourselves and for generations to come.

Psychopathic personality is associated with many kinds of anti-social and dangerous behaviors, including violence, exploitation, dishonesty, recklessness, laziness, sexual promiscuity, and even the absence of human empathy and genuine love. Race differences in the prevalence of psychopathy is thus extremely consequential for the future of multiracial societies. In this book, eminent personality researcher Richard Lynn marshals an enormous body of evidence to demonstrate clear and consistent race differences in psychopathic personality, as well as to explore why these differences evolved across time. In an age of mass migration and increasing interaction between different races, few books could be more timely and important.

* * *

It takes courage to write books on race and intelligence in the present political climate. It takes even more courage to explore the origin, existence, and consequences of race differences in psychopathic personality. Richard Lynn has dared to do both. The relevance of this book cannot be overestimated in a time in which globalization increasingly forces different races to live and work together. May politicians responsible for migration programs--and everyone interested in peaceful coexistence--read Lynn's books closely before making decisions that affect all our lives.

Helmuth Nyborg
Professor Emeritus
University of Aarhus, Denmark

Our increasing reliance on digital technology has had a profound impact on our own abilities as humans. What can we do about it?

In a fascinating journey through history and science, Human Being offers an insightful and provocative survey of twelve vital skills we used to call upon as a species - from navigation, conversation and memory to craft, solitude and sleep - and how we can work to reclaim them.

As rapidly advancing technology embeds itself ever deeper within our lives, we rely less and less on our own capabilities. The impact on our skills and self-reliance has been immense, and, because the transition has happened so swiftly and quietly, none of us have been taught how to address the effects of our ever-increasing dependence on algorithms and artificial intelligence.

Based on years of research by author Graham Lee, a digital skills educator with experience training tens of thousands of professionals, each chapter in Human Being highlights an example of when these key capabilities were at their peak, demonstrates how in a vanishingly short space of time we have embraced ways to undermine them, and provides clear, achievable guidance on how we can reverse these losses and regain our essential, human qualities.

At once a celebration of human history and a timely call to action, Human Being empowers readers to build better habits around - and away from - technology, and reminds us just how extraordinary human achievement can be.

Rose, Olaf, Verdandi, Sophia, Li, and their friends continue their Quest for the tools and ways to co-create a thriving world and future. Empowered with the knowledge of the quantum realities of our Universe, they discover how to decode the economics of domination and the governance of disunity. Explore how you can develop with them your future human powers with the help of the seven Cosmic Architect Tools, the Avatar interface, and ten transformation practices. Although recommended, it is not necessary to have read the first book.

Unlock your potential with BRAVE AND BRILLIANT, an anthology filled with powerful insights and practical tips to help you live a life of bravery, courage and possibilities. From embracing conflict with curiosity to discovering the strength in vulnerability, each chapter offers a unique perspective on courage and brilliance.

Learn to let go, navigate through conflict with curiosity, transform limiting beliefs, take risks, prioritize effectively, and connect deeply with yourself. This book is your guide to navigating life's challenges with grace and confidence.

With stories of resilience, leadership, and personal growth, BRAVE AND BRILLIANT empowers you to take bold steps toward your dreams. Join the movement of brave and brilliant individuals shaping the world. Get your copy today and start your journey to a brighter, more impactful future.

Here are the 3 biggest reasons why you should buy and read BRAVE And BRILLIANT

1. Inspiring stories of courage and transformation
. Each chapter is filled with real-life stories of overcoming fears, adversity, and personal challenges. These powerful experiences will inspire you to take bold steps in your own life.
2. Practical tools for personal growth
. The book offers actionable tips and insights that help you embrace vulnerability, handle conflict with grace, and connect more deeply with yourself. You'll gain practical strategies to apply immediately in your everyday life.
3. Diverse perspectives to spark new ideas
 with contributions from a range of experts-from leadership coaches to TEDx speakers-the book brings together unique perspectives, giving you a fresh outlook on resilience, self-discovery, and success.

Featuring: Dr. Izdihar Jamil, Ph.D., Carol Barkes, Cindy Warden, Dr. Danielle Zanzarov, Ph.D., Diego Perez, Hannah Kim, Captain Jeremy Stoker, Ruben Perez, Erin Tran, Laura Clancy, and Lisa Pezik.

A groundbreaking and timely book about how evolutionary biology can explain our black-and-white brains, and a lesson in how we can escape the pitfalls of binary thinking.

Several million years ago, natural selection equipped us with binary, black-and-white brains. Though the world was arguably simpler back then, it was in many ways much more dangerous. Not coincidentally, the binary brain was highly adept at detecting risk--the ability to analyze threats and respond to changes in the sensory environment was essential to our survival as a species.

Since then, the world has evolved--but we, for the most part, have not. Confronted with a panoply of shades of gray, our brains have a tendency to force quit to sort the things we see, hear, and experience into manageable but simplistic categories. We stereotype, pigeonhole, and, above all, draw lines where in reality there are none.

In Black-and-White Thinking, the renowned psychologist Kevin Dutton pulls back the curtains of the mind to reveal a new way of thinking about a problem as old as humanity itself. While our instinct for categorization often leads us astray, encouraging polarization, rigid thinking, and sometimes outright denialism, it is an essential component of the mental machinery we use to make sense of the world.

Using the latest advances in psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology, Dutton shows how we can optimize our tendency to categorize and fine-tune our minds to avoid the pitfalls of too little--and too much--complexity. He reveals the enduring importance of three super-categories--Fight versus Flight, Us versus Them, and Right versus Wrong--and argues that they remain essential not only to convincing others to change their minds but to changing the world for the better.

Black-and-White Thinking is a science-based wake-up call for an era of increasing extremism and a thought-provoking, uplifting guide to training our gray matter to see that gray really does matter.

An entertaining and enlightening deep dive into the alcohol-soaked origins of civilization--and the evolutionary roots of humanity's appetite for intoxication (Daniel E. Lieberman, author of Exercised).

While plenty of entertaining books have been written about the history of alcohol and other intoxicants, none have offered a comprehensive, convincing answer to the basic question of why humans want to get high in the first place.

Drunk elegantly cuts through the tangle of urban legends and anecdotal impressions that surround our notions of intoxication to provide the first rigorous, scientifically-grounded explanation for our love of alcohol. Drawing on evidence from archaeology, history, cognitive neuroscience, psychopharmacology, social psychology, literature, and genetics, Drunk shows that our taste for chemical intoxicants is not an evolutionary mistake, as we are so often told. In fact, intoxication helps solve a number of distinctively human challenges: enhancing creativity, alleviating stress, building trust, and pulling off the miracle of getting fiercely tribal primates to cooperate with strangers. Our desire to get drunk, along with the individual and social benefits provided by drunkenness, played a crucial role in sparking the rise of the first large-scale societies. We would not have civilization without intoxication.

From marauding Vikings and bacchanalian orgies to sex-starved fruit flies, blind cave fish, and problem-solving crows, Drunk is packed with fascinating case studies and engaging science, as well as practical takeaways for individuals and communities. The result is a captivating and long overdue investigation into humanity's oldest indulgence--one that explains not only why we want to get drunk, but also how it might actually be good for us to tie one on now and then.

In the tradition of the best immersive journalism. -A.J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically

A bold examination of how Paleolithic wisdom could solve our 21st century problems

Jessica Carew Kraft, an urban wife and mom of two, was firmly rooted in the modern world, complete with a high-powered career in tech and the sneaking suspicion that her lifestyle was preventing her and her family from truly thriving. Determined to find a better way, Jessica quit her job and set out to learn about rewilding from people who reject the comforts and convenience of civilization by using ancient tools and skills to survive. Along the way, she learned how to turn sticks into fire, stones into axes, and bones into tools for harvesting wild food--and found an entire community walking the path back from our technology-focused, anxiety-ridden way of life to a simpler, more human experience.

Weaving deep research and reportage with her own personal journey, Jessica tells the remarkable story of the potential benefits rewilding has for us and our planet, and questions what it truly means to be a human in today's world. For readers of A Hunter-Gatherer's Guide to the 21st Century and Hunt, Gather, Parent, Why We Need to Be Wild is a thought-provoking, unforgettable narrative that illuminates how we survived in the past, how we live now, and how each of us can choose to thrive in the years ahead.

Kraft shows us how we could all benefit from being a little less civilized. --Tiffany Shlain, author of 24/6: The Power of Unplugging One Day a Week

Anthropomorphism is the human tendency to attribute human-like thoughts, feelings, and intentions to non-human things. It's a cognitive bias baked into the human mind that distorts our view of the world. But it doesn't just affect our understanding of animals. Anthropomorphism impacts our relationship to all living things, as well as inanimate objects (like AI), and natural phenomena (like hurricanes). It's perhaps one of the most powerful cognitive biases influencing our thoughts, but it's rarely talked about. It's time to change that.

In this groundbreaking book, bestselling science writer Justin Gregg takes readers on a journey through the science behind our peculiar tendency to humanize the nonhuman. Prepare to be amazed as Gregg unveils a world filled with emotional support alligators, a woman who married her briefcase, and Soviet super babies that drink dolphin milk. With a delightful mix of scientific insight and humor, this comprehensive exploration delves into the bizarre ways we engage in anthropomorphism. Each chapter is a treasure-trove of quirky stories and fascinating research, unraveling the reasons behind our instinct to see ourselves in the creatures around us.

Gregg explores why we treat pets like people, how anthropomorphism drives consumerism, and the inverse process, dehumanization. Readers will come away with a better understanding of the biological benefits to anthropomorhism, how our lives are enriched by it, and how to harness it to create healthier relationships.

Humanish is a crash course in anthropomorphism and an engaging exploration of the human experience, told through a comedic lens that will resonate with anyone who has ever whispered sweet nothings to their dog or imagined their cat plotting world domination.

What makes us peek at a car wreck or binge-watch true crime shows late into the night? Why are some of us drawn to horror movies while others shudder at the thought? In Morbidly Curious, scientist Coltan Scrivner takes readers on a thrilling journey into the psychology of morbid curiosity, uncovering why we can't resist the macabre. From grisly serial killers to spine-chilling paranormal stories, Scrivner reveals the psychological forces that compel us to explore our darkest fears--and explains how this proclivity is more than just a quirk. It's a powerful survival instinct, helping us mentally prepare for real-world threats, all from the safety of our imaginations.

Blending fascinating insights and cutting-edge research at haunted houses across the world, Scrivner makes a powerful argument for the value of playing with fear and embracing the gruesome. Whether you're a horror fan yourself or just want to better understand the true crime craze, Morbidly Curious will open your eyes to the hidden benefits of exploring the dark side of human nature.

BEST SELLER EN EE. UU.

Una provocadora historia de la humanidad que ahonda en los orígenes de la evolución para entender y poner solución a los problemas de la vida moderna

Vivimos la época más próspera de toda la historia de la humanidad y, sin embargo, la mayoría de las personas están más desganadas, enfadadas y deprimidas que nunca. Qué explicación lógica cabe? Más aún, qué podemos hacer para cambiar esta tendencia?

Heying y Weinstein, pareja y biólogos evolutivos ambos, nos explican que nuestros males nacen de la disonancia entre el mundo moderno y nuestros cerebros y cuerpos ancestrales. Hemos evolucionado para vivir en clanes, pero en la actualidad la mayoría de la gente ni siquiera conoce el nombre de sus vecinos. Hemos sobrevivido gracias al sexo, y ahora ponemos en duda su misma existencia. La educación, la alimentación o el sueño han obedecido siempre a hábitos que han sobrevivido milenios y que ahora nos permitimos alterar o cuestionar.

Guía del cazador-recolector para el siglo XXI rompe con el discurso políticamente correcto y nos ofrece principios claros y prácticos para ayudarnos a tener una vida más feliz y próspera.

De gran alcance y revelador, este libro plantea una perspectiva fascinante, sorprendente y compleja de la naturaleza humana.

Jordan B. Peterson, autor de 12 reglas para vivir

Nunca he leído un análisis tan valiente, bien documentado y sintético de la desconcertante situación en la que nos encontramos. Todos los que se preguntan por qué la sociedad más próspera de la historia tiene un porcentaje tan astronómico de depresión, ansiedad y enfermedad encontrarán excelentes respuestas en este libro.

Robert Ornstein and Paul Ehrlich explain that we are causing our own problems because we have created a world where our basic mental functions are no longer suitable. We evolved over a period of millions of years to survive in small tribal families on the wild grassy plains of East Africa. Now the way we live has nothing to do with that time and place, but the mental tools that were developed to survive on the savanna have remained unchanged. These instincts were wonderfully adapted to the environment that shaped them. But that world, the world that made us, is gone. Now these same instincts are causing us to destroy the world that we made. The threats we face are of our own making, and we can unmake them. If people learn how we have come to this point, we can restore our hope for the future. New World New Mind describes the way our minds have evolved, and offers suggestions for how to cope with who we are in the world we live in now. Recent decades have seen remarkable progress in many areas. For example, despite the abject suffering of millions of people, it is nonetheless true that there has been unprecedented alleviation of poverty and disease for the world's poorest people. There are so many promising and astonishing advances in medicine, technology, and the social and physical sciences that if we give ourselves a chance to survive, our species could enter a golden age.

Dunbar's Number, as the limit on the size of both social groups and personal social networks, has achieved something close to iconic status and is one of the most influential concepts to have emerged out of anthropology in the last quarter century. It is widely cited throughout the social sciences, archaeology, psychology and network science, and its reverberations have been felt as far afield as the worlds of business organization and social-networking sites, whose design it has come to underpin. Named after its originator, Robin Dunbar, whose career has spanned biological anthropology, zoology and evolutionary psychology, it stands testament to the importance of an interdisciplinary approach to human behaviour. In this collection Dunbar joins authors from a wide range of disciplines to explore Dunbar's Number's conceptual origins, as well as the evidence supporting it, and to reflect on its wider implications in archaeology, social anthropology and medicine.