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Why do we do the things we do?
Over a decade in the making, this game-changing book is Robert Sapolsky's genre-shattering attempt to answer that question as fully as perhaps only he could, looking at it from every angle. Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: he starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its genetic inheritance.
And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. What goes on in a person's brain a second before the behavior happens? Then he pulls out to a slightly larger field of vision, a little earlier in time: What sight, sound, or smell triggers the nervous system to produce that behavior? And then, what hormones act hours to days earlier to change how responsive that individual is to the stimuli which trigger the nervous system? By now, he has increased our field of vision so that we are thinking about neurobiology and the sensory world of our environment and endocrinology in trying to explain what happened.
Sapolsky keeps going--next to what features of the environment affected that person's brain, and then back to the childhood of the individual, and then to their genetic makeup. Finally, he expands the view to encompass factors larger than that one individual. How culture has shaped that individual's group, what ecological factors helped shape that culture, and on and on, back to evolutionary factors thousands and even millions of years old.
The result is one of the most dazzling tours de horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted, a majestic synthesis that harvests cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines to provide a subtle and nuanced perspective on why we ultimately do the things we do...for good and for ill. Sapolsky builds on this understanding to wrestle with some of our deepest and thorniest questions relating to tribalism and xenophobia, hierarchy and competition, morality and free will, and war and peace. Wise, humane, often very funny, Behave is a towering achievement, powerfully humanizing, and downright heroic in its own right.
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Subjects
Neurophysiology, Neurobiology, Animal behavior, nyt:paperback-nonfiction=2018-05-20, New York Times bestseller, Human beings, Human behavior, nyt:science=2017-06-11, New York Times reviewed, Animal Behavior, Neurophysiologie, Neurobiologie, Animaux, Mœurs et comportement, SCIENCE, Life Sciences, Biology, General, SOCIAL SCIENCE, Criminology, Neuroscience, MEDICAL, Physiology, Human Anatomy & Physiology, Nyt:paperback-nonfiction=2018-05-20, New york times bestsellerShowing 8 featured editions. View all 8 editions?
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1
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
2018, Vintage
Paperback
in English
009957506X 9780099575061
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2
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
May 01, 2018, Penguin Books
Paperback
0143110918 9780143110910
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4
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
2017, Penguin Random House
in English
1847924719 9781847924711
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5
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
2017, Penguin Random House
in English
1448129788 9781448129782
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6
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
May 2, 2017, Penguin Press, Penguin Press, an imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
Hardcover
1594205078 9781594205071
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8
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
May 25, 2017, Bodley Head Adults
board book
1847922163 9781847922168
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- Created January 17, 2019
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December 19, 2023 | Edited by ImportBot | import existing book |
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January 18, 2022 | Edited by AgentSapphire | Merge works |
January 17, 2019 | Created by Katja Durrani | Added new book. |