Non-Fictie

This biography of Charles Darwin attempts to capture the private unknown life of the real man - the gambling and gluttony at Cambridge, his gruelling trip round the globe, his intimate family life, worries about persecution and thoughts about God. Central to all of this, his pioneering efforts on the theory of evolution now that recent studies have overturned the commonplace views of Darwin that have held for more than a century.

This adventure in science and imagination, which the Medical Tribune said might herald "a Copernican revolution for the life sciences," leads the reader through unexplored jungles and uncharted aspects of mind to the heart of knowledge.In a first-person narrative of scientific discovery that opens new perspectives on biology, anthropology, and the limits of rationalism, The Cosmic Serpent reveals how startlingly different the world around us appears when we open our minds to it.

In trying to understand the atom, physicists built quantum mechanics and found, to their embarrassment, that their theory intimately connects consciousness with the physical world. Quantum Enigma explores what that implies and why some founders of the theory became the foremost objectors to it. Authors Bruce Rosenblum and Fred Kuttner explain all of this in non-technical terms with help from some fanciful stories and anecdotes about the theory's developers. They present the quantum mystery honestly, with an emphasis on what is and what is not speculation. Quantum Enigma's description of the experimental quantum facts, and the quantum theory explaining them, is undisputed. Interpreting what it all means, however, is controversial. Every interpretation of quantum physics encounters consciousness. Rosenblum and Kuttner therefore turn to exploring consciousness itself--and encounter quantum physics. Free will and anthropic principles become crucial issues, and the connection of consciousness with the cosmos suggested by some leading quantum cosmologists is mind-blowing. Readers are brought to a boundary where the particular expertise of physicists is no longer a sure guide. They will find, instead, the facts and hints provided by quantum mechanics and the ability to speculate for themselves.

War, despite its indisputably horrific nature, has shaped the international system, prompted social and technological change, and inspired the arts. This insightful book captures fully the ubiquitous and multifaceted character of war, featuring accounts by generals, soldiers, historians, strategists, and poets, who consider conflicts from the Napoleonic Wars to Bosnia. Firsthand accounts vividly evoke the French infantry experience at Waterloo, a Union-Confederate skirmish at Gettysburg, the reflections of a German seaman at Jutland, one civilian's impressions of the Blitz, the trials of a Japanese doctor in the wake of the Atom Bomb's obliteration of Nagasaki, the confusion of Vietnam, and more. A broad range of questions are addressed: What are the causes of war? Which strategic as well as moral principles guide its conduct, and how have these changed? Has total war become unthinkable? What is the nature of contemporary conflict? How is war experienced by those on the front line? With contributions by leading scholars, and edited by one the most oft-quoted and prolific of military experts, this reader offers a deeper and more comprehensive understanding of one of humankind's oldest and most controversial preoccupations.

Onderzoek naar het verschijnsel nihilisme in verleden en heden en de invloed ervan op cultuur, maatschappij en persoonlijkheid. In 1960 promoveerde Goudsblom op het proefschrift "Nihilisme en cultuur". Goudsblom, inmiddels emeritus-hoogleraar sociologie, heeft destijds een overzicht gegeven van de geschiedenis van de begrippen 'nihilisme' en 'cultuur' en van hun interactie, met Nietzsche als centrale figuur. Nihilisme is een geestesgesteldheid waarin mensen niets meer zinvol vinden, geen enkele sociale norm nog als bindend erkennen, en menen dat, zoals Friedrich Nietzsche gezegd heeft, de hoogste waarden zijn uitgehold. Van deze intellectuele vertwijfeling wordt in dit boek de herkomst nagegaan. Goudsblom kwam uiteindelijk uit op het bestaan van individuele autonomie als bron van persoonlijke waarden.

Polemische notities over uiteenlopende onderwerpen. Karel van het Reve (1921-1999) schreef zelden iets zonder dat iemand hem daarom had gevraagd, maar 'fragmenten' schreef hij in eerste instantie voor zichzelf, om een gedachte, een herinnering vast te pinnen voor die weer vervloog. Het is te danken aan K.L. Poll, oprichter en redacteur van Hollands Maandblad, dat zij toch in dat tijdschrift werden gepubliceerd. Een deel ervan nam Van het Reve later als Fragmenten in zijn boeken op.

Voor deze bundel Ik heb nooit iets gelezen en alle andere fragmenten geldt dat de schrijver er zelf het plan voor had, maar aan de uitvoering ervan niet meer is toegekomen. Dat is dus dit boek geworden. Het bevat, op zes vrijwel woordelijke herhalingen na, alle, dat wil zeggen ruim vijfhonderd fragmenten die Van het Reve vanaf 1963 in Hollands Maandblad publiceerde. Bijna de helft ervan verschijnt hier voor het eerst in boekvorm.
Ik heb nooit iets gelezen biedt de lezer als het ware een blik in de werkkamer van de schrijver. In een bonte stoet komt van alles voorbij: Russische dissidenten, opinions chic, wetenschap, kruiswoordraadsels, literatuur en vele andere zaken. Fascinerend is het om te zien hoe Van het Reves ideeën, die later in opzienbarende - vaak tot grote woede van zijn tegenstanders leidende - artikelen werden verwerkt, hier vaak al in een pril stadium aanwezig zijn. Dat geldt bijvoorbeeld voor zijn bezwaren tegen Marx, Freud en Dostojevski en zijn kritiek op de evolutieleer en pseudowetenschappen als de literatuurwetenschap. Ook de periode toen Van het Reve als correspondent van Het Parool in Moskou woonde (zomer 1967 tot zomer 1968) is in de fragmenten duidelijk te herkennen.

The next election is the most important one America has faced in more than a century. That’s not campaign hype. America is divided as almost never before—with contesting political factions regarding themselves not as rivals but as enemies. And the frightening thing is that, in large part, they’re right.

The Democratic Party has become the party of “identity politics”—and every one of those identities is defined against a unifying national heritage of patriotism, pride in America’s past, and hope for a shared future.

Offering only antagonism based on group identity—whether race, sex, or something else—the Democrats look forward to imposing nationally what they have achieved in California: one-party rule in a lockdown nation, where the ruling class makes every decision and doles out benefits to favored groups.

Against them is a divided Republican Party. Gravely misunderstanding the opposition, old-style Republicans still seek bipartisanship and accommodation, wrongly assuming that Democrats care about playing by the tiresome old rules laid down in the Constitution and other fundamental charters of American liberty.

The new core of the Republican Party is the populists and nationalists, who are tired of losing. The party’s only hope of victory, they are all that stand between the United States as we have traditionally understood it and a revolution—less dramatic in appearance but just as consequential as the Bolshevik Revolution in Russia.

Michael Anton, the author of the most scathing, memorable, and quoted essay of the 2016 campaign season, “The Flight 93 Election”—which Rush Limbaugh called “one of the greatest columns ever written”—now explains in depth why the stakes have risen even higher.

Ranging across every hot-button political topic of our time—from immigration to nationalism to war—and informed by a profound understanding of classical and American political philosophy, The Stakes will transform the way you view politics and America’s future.

Australopithecines, dinosaurs, trilobites--such fossils conjure up images of lost worlds filled with vanished organisms. But in the full history of life, ancient animals, even the trilobites, form only the half-billion-year tip of a nearly four-billion-year iceberg. Andrew Knoll explores the deep history of life from its origins on a young planet to the incredible Cambrian explosion, presenting a compelling new explanation for the emergence of biological novelty.


The very latest discoveries in paleontology--many of them made by the author and his students--are integrated with emerging insights from molecular biology and earth system science to forge a broad understanding of how the biological diversity that surrounds us came to be. Moving from Siberia to Namibia to the Bahamas, Knoll shows how life and environment have evolved together through Earth's history. Innovations in biology have helped shape our air and oceans, and, just as surely, environmental change has influenced the course of evolution, repeatedly closing off opportunities for some species while opening avenues for others.

Readers go into the field to confront fossils, enter the lab to discern the inner workings of cells, and alight on Mars to ask how our terrestrial experience can guide exploration for life beyond our planet. Along the way, Knoll brings us up-to-date on some of science's hottest questions, from the oldest fossils and claims of life beyond the Earth to the hypothesis of global glaciation and Knoll's own unifying concept of ''permissive ecology.''

In laying bare Earth's deepest biological roots, Life on a Young Planet helps us understand our own place in the universe--and our responsibility as stewards of a world four billion years in the making.

In a new preface, Knoll describes how the field has broadened and deepened in the decade since the book's original publication.

"Een wereld vol patronen' gaat over de uniek menselijke zoektocht naar patronen in de natuur en cultuur en de daaruit afgeleide systematische kennis. Deze queeste begon meer dan 30.000 jaar geleden met het krassen van streepjespatronen op mammoetbotten en is uitgemond in de wetenschappen van vandaag. Welke route heeft menselijke kennis doorlopen om van zulk een bescheiden begin uit te groeien naar onze huidige inzichten over evolutie, heelal en de menselijke cultuur, en het bijbehorende palet aan disciplines die we wetenschappen noemen? In 'Een wereld vol patronen' brengt Rens Bod alle vormen van kennis bijeen. Hoe verschillend deze ook lijken, de notie van patronen brengt ze bij elkaar. De Babyloniërs ontdekten dat redeneerpatronen in het recht toegepast konden worden in de geneeskunde. De Grieken ontdekten dat patronen in getallen ook waren te vinden in planeetbewegingen en muziek. En sinds de twintigste eeuw weten we dat veel patronen in taal terug zijn te vinden in de biologie. De zoektocht naar patronen blijkt het wezenlijke kenmerk van de mens".

Van 1672 tot 1712 was de Republiek der Verenigde Nederlanden in een titanenstrijd met he t Frankrijk van de Zonnekoning verwikkeld. Gedurende deze 'Veertigjarige Oorlog' leverde zij onder aanvoering van stadhouder-koning Willem III (1650-1702) en zijn politieke erfgenamen een gigantische militaire inspanning. De veerkracht, standvastigheid en volharding waarmee de Nederlanders vochten dwongen Lodewijk XIV zijn politiek van territoriale expansie op te geven en een Europees machtsevenwicht te aanvaarden. Zijn opvolgers dachten er niet aan het oorspronkelijke plan van de Zonnekoning om de Zuidelijke Nederlanden - het huidige België - bij Frankrijk in te lijven ooit te voltooien. Integendeel, zij wilden dit gebied het liefst permanent neutraal verklaren en daardoor een nieuwe krachtmeting met de Nederlanders vermijden. Na veertig jaar oorlog kon er geen twijfel over bestaan dat de Republiek de hoeksteen was geweest van de grote Europese allianties die de troon van Lodewijk XIV, de 'machtigste vorst van de wereld', aan het wankelen hadden gebracht. De Veertigjarige Oorlog had Frankrijk zozeer uitgeput dat het tot de revolutie van 1789 zou duren voordat de Fransen opnieuw veroveringsoorlogen voerden.

Keizer Frederik ll van Hohenstaufen was de 'stupor mundi', de verbazing van de wereld. Hij was keizer van het heilige Romeinse Rijk, koning van Sicilië en Napels en werkte aan een imperium waarin vrede en gerechtigheid moesten heersen. Daarnaast was hij een wetenschapper van formaat. Zijn standaardwerk over de valkenjacht is nog steeds actueel. Crul beschrijft het leven van Frederik ll in dit rijk geïllustreerde boek in het licht van de middeleeuwse wetenschapsgeschiedenis.

Co-authored by Michael Kranish and Marc Fisher, the investigation was guided by the team who inspired the Academy Award-winning film Spotlight, which stars Michael Keaton, Mark Ruffalo and Rachel McAdams. WHO IS DONALD J. TRUMP? To discover Trump in full, the Washington Post assembled a team of award-winning reporters and researchers to investigate every aspect of his life, from his privileged upbringing, his lawsuits, his infamous womanizing, his ever-changing party affiliation, and his astonishing, disruptive election as president in November 2016. What emerges is a portrait of an indecisive man with a penchant for big bets - on property, branded businesses, and, ultimately, on himself. Trump Revealed provides essential insight into this billionaire businessman, celebrity, and global brand who is now the president of the United States.

Look at the state of the world right now. It’s a terrible mess, and that’s putting it mildly. There has never been a more dangerous time. The politicians and special interests in Washington, DC, are directly responsible for the mess we are in. So why should we continue listening to them?

It’s time to bring America back to its rightful owners—the American people.

I’m not going to play the same game politicians have been playing for decades—all talk, no action, while special interests and lobbyists dictate our laws. I am shaking up the establishment on both sides of the political aisle because I can’t be bought. I want to bring America back, to make it great and prosperous again, and to be sure we are respected by our allies and feared by our adversaries.

It’s time for action. Americans are fed up with politics as usual. And they should be! In this book, I outline my vision to make America great again, including: how to fix our failing economy; how to reform health care so it is more efficient, cost-effective, and doesn’t alienate both doctors and patients; how to rebuild our military and start winning wars—instead of watching our enemies take over—while keeping our promises to our great veterans; how to ensure that our education system offers the resources that allow our students to compete internationally, so tomorrow’s jobseekers have the tools they need to succeed; and how to immediately bring jobs back to America by closing our doors to illegal immigrants, and pressuring businesses to produce their goods at home.

This book is my blueprint for how to Make America Great Again. It’s not hard. We just need someone with the courage to say what needs to be said.

Just over a thousand years ago, the Song dynasty emerged as the most advanced civilization on earth. Within two centuries, China was home to nearly half of all humankind. In this concise history, we learn why the inventiveness of this era has been favorably compared with the European Renaissance, which in many ways the Song transformation surpassed.

With the chaotic dissolution of the Tang dynasty, the old aristocratic families vanished. A new class of scholar-officials—products of a meritocratic examination system—took up the task of reshaping Chinese tradition by adapting the precepts of Confucianism to a rapidly changing world. Through fiscal reforms, these elites liberalized the economy, eased the tax burden, and put paper money into circulation. Their redesigned capitals buzzed with traders, while the education system offered advancement to talented men of modest means. Their rationalist approach led to inventions in printing, shipbuilding, weaving, ceramics manufacture, mining, and agriculture. With a realist’s eye, they studied the natural world and applied their observations in art and science. And with the souls of diplomats, they chose peace over war with the aggressors on their borders. Yet persistent military threats from these nomadic tribes—which the Chinese scorned as their cultural inferiors—redefined China’s understanding of its place in the world and solidified a sense of what it meant to be Chinese.

The Age of Confucian Rule is an essential introduction to this transformative era. “A scholar should congratulate himself that he has been born in such a time” (Zhao Ruyu, 1194).

In his now classic Two Powers in Heaven, Alan Segal examines rabbinic evidence about early manifestations of the "two powers" heresy within Judaism. Segal sheds light upon the development of and relationships among early Christianity, Gnosticism, and Merkabah mysticism and demonstrates that belief in the "two powers in heaven" was widespread by the first century, and may have been a catalyst for the Jewish rejection of early Christianity. An important addition to New Testament and Gnostic scholarship by this much revered scholar, Segal's Two Powers in Heaven is made available once again for a new generation.

This fascinating study shows how terrorism as developed and practiced in Romanov Russia has, over the past century, manifested itself as the template for modern and postmodern terrorism as a universal sociocultural, psychological, and existential experience, irrespective of particular political causes, ethnic distinctions, and ideological boundaries.

Arguing that Russia is the birthplace of modern terrorism, Death Orders: The Vanguard of Modern Terrorism in Revolutionary Russia uses the nation as a case study of psycho-historical patterns of worldwide terrorist activity during the past century. Key features of early-20th century Russian political extremism serve as models for terrorist experiences in other periods and regions as author Anna Geifman builds a typology of a universal phenomenon.

The book shows how, in Russia and elsewhere, terrorists' objectives have degenerated from punishment of individual adversaries and attempts to intimidate political elites to indiscriminate acts of political violence. It shifts attention from ideology to practices that had been previously hidden, ignored, or rationalized, demonstrating that what terrorists say about their motives may not be what actually drives them to brutality. By looking closely at Russian precedents for the general experience of modern political violence, the book helps illuminate many obscure aspects of terrorism today.

The Geography of Ethnic Violence is the first among numerous distinguished books on ethnic violence to clarify the vital role of territory in explaining such conflict. Monica Toft introduces and tests a theory of ethnic violence, one that provides a compelling general explanation of not only most ethnic violence, civil wars, and terrorism but many interstate wars as well. This understanding can foster new policy initiatives with real potential to make ethnic violence either less likely or less destructive. It can also guide policymakers to solutions that endure.

The book offers a distinctively powerful synthesis of comparative politics and international relations theories, as well as a striking blend of statistical and historical case study methodologies. By skillfully combining a statistical analysis of a large number of ethnic conflicts with a focused comparison of historical cases of ethnic violence and nonviolence--including four major conflicts in the former Soviet Union--it achieves a rare balance of general applicability and deep insight.

Toft concludes that only by understanding how legitimacy and power interact can we hope to learn why some ethnic conflicts turn violent while others do not. Concentrated groups defending a self-defined homeland often fight to the death, while dispersed or urbanized groups almost never risk violence to redress their grievances. Clearly written and rigorously documented, this book represents a major contribution to an ongoing debate that spans a range of disciplines including international relations, comparative politics, sociology, and history.

What is involved here is the difference, as I wrote in the February 2012 essay for Commentary magazine that is included in this collection, between what I call "bierkeller" and "bistro" antisemitism. The crude, violent antisemitism incubated in the German bierkellers where the Nazis guzzled beer and shouted themselves hoarse was a hallmark of the twentieth century. Polite, modulated, ostensibly reasonable antisemitism, often calling itself "anti-Zionism," and expressed in the progressive chatter across the tables of fashionable bistros, is a hallmark of the twenty-first. Ben Cohen

One of the U.S. government's leading China experts reveals the hidden strategy fueling that country's rise – and how Americans have been seduced into helping China overtake us as the world's leading superpower.

For more than forty years, the United States has played an indispensable role helping the Chinese government build a booming economy, develop its scientific and military capabilities, and take its place on the world stage, in the belief that China's rise will bring us cooperation, diplomacy, and free trade. But what if the "China Dream" is to replace us, just as America replaced the British Empire, without firing a shot?

Based on interviews with Chinese defectors and newly declassified, previously undisclosed national security documents, The Hundred-Year Marathon reveals China's secret strategy to supplant the United States as the world's dominant power, and to do so by 2049, the one-hundredth anniversary of the founding of the People's Republic. Michael Pillsbury, a fluent Mandarin speaker who has served in senior national security positions in the U.S. government since the days of Richard Nixon and Henry Kissinger, draws on his decades of contact with the "hawks" in China's military and intelligence agencies and translates their documents, speeches, and books to show how the teachings of traditional Chinese statecraft underpin their actions. He offers an inside look at how the Chinese really view America and its leaders – as barbarians who will be the architects of their own demise.

Pillsbury also explains how the U.S. government has helped – sometimes unwittingly and sometimes deliberately – to make this "China Dream" come true, and he calls for the United States to implement a new, more competitive strategy toward China as it really is, and not as we might wish it to be. The Hundred-Year Marathon is a wake-up call as we face the greatest national security challenge of the twenty-first century.

David Bohm was one of the foremost scientific thinkers and philosophers of our time. Although deeply influenced by Einstein, he was also, more unusually for a scientist, inspired by mysticism. Indeed, in the 1970s and 1980s he made contact with both J. Krishnamurti and the Dalai Lama whose teachings helped shape his work. In both science and philosophy, Bohm's main concern was with understanding the nature of reality in general and of consciousness in particular. In this classic work he develops a theory of quantum physics which treats the totality of existence as an unbroken whole. Writing clearly and without technical jargon, he makes complex ideas accessible to anyone interested in the nature of reality.

The New York Times bestseller that reminded us what it means to be an American is more timely than ever in this updated and enlarged edition, including "Schlesinger's Syllabus," an annotated reading list of core books on the American experience.

The classic image of the American nation — a melting pot in which differences of race, wealth, religion, and nationality are submerged in democracy — is being replaced by an orthodoxy that celebrates difference and abandons assimilation. While this upsurge in ethnic awareness has had many healthy consequences in a nation shamed by a history of prejudice, the cult of ethnicity, if pressed too far, threatens to fragment American society to a dangerous degree. Two-time Pulitzer Prize winner in history and adviser to the Kennedy and other administrations, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr., is uniquely positioned to wave the caution flag in the race to a politics of identity. Using a broader canvas in this updated and expanded edition, he examines the international dimension and the lessons of one polyglot country after another tearing itself apart or on the brink of doing so: among them the former Yugoslavia, Nigeria, even Canada. Closer to home, he finds troubling new evidence that multiculturalism gone awry here in the United States threatens to do the same. "One of the most devastating and articulate attacks on multiculturalism yet to appear."—Wall Street Journal "A brilliant book . . . we owe Arthur Schlesinger a great debt of gratitude."—C. Vann Woodward, New Republic

Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

A Slate Best Book of 2011

A Discover Magazine Best Book of 2011

Lianyungang, a booming port city, has China's most extreme gender ratio for children under four: 163 boys for every 100 girls. These numbers don't seem terribly grim, but in ten years, the skewed sex ratio will pose a colossal challenge. By the time those children reach adulthood, their generation will have twenty-four million more men than women.

The prognosis for China's neighbors is no less bleak: Asia now has 163 million females "missing" from its population. Gender imbalance reaches far beyond Asia, affecting Georgia, Eastern Europe, and cities in the U.S. where there are significant immigrant populations. The world, therefore, is becoming increasingly male, and this mismatch is likely to create profound social upheaval.

Historically, eras in which there have been an excess of men have produced periods of violent conflict and instability. Mara Hvistendahl has written a stunning, impeccably-researched book that does not flinch from examining not only the consequences of the misbegotten policies of sex selection but Western complicity with them.

Artikelen over vragen die verband houden met het begin van het nieuwe millennium.

In Between the Alps and a Hard Place, Professor Angelo M. Codevilla reveals how the true history of the Swiss in World War II has been buried beneath a modern campaign of moral blackmail that has accused Switzerland of secretly supporting Nazi Germany and sharing culpability for the Holocaust. Codevilla -- who practiced real-life, hardball foreign policy as an intelligence adviser in the U.S. Senate -- offers a primer on the realities of power politics, using the Swiss experience in World War II to illuminate the workings of the balance of power, military deterrence, economic leverage, and subversion.

With armed conflict in the Persian Gulf now upon us, Harvard archaeologist Steven LeBlanc takes a long-term view of the nature and roots of war, presenting a controversial thesis: The notion of the "noble savage" living in peace with one another and in harmony with nature is a fantasy. In Constant Battles: The Myth of the Peaceful, Noble Savage, LeBlanc contends that warfare and violent conflict have existed throughout human history, and that humans have never lived in ecological balance with nature.

The start of the second major U.S. military action in the Persian Gulf, combined with regular headlines about spiraling environmental destruction, would tempt anyone to conclude that humankind is fast approaching a catastrophic end. But as LeBlanc brilliantly argues, the archaeological record shows that the warfare and ecological destruction we find today fit into patterns of human behavior that have gone on for millions of years.

Constant Battles surveys human history in terms of social organization-from hunter gatherers, to tribal agriculturalists, to more complex societies. LeBlanc takes the reader on his own digs around the world -- from New Guinea to the Southwestern U.S. to Turkey -- to show how he has come to discover warfare everywhere at every time. His own fieldwork combined with his archaeological, ethnographic, and historical research, presents a riveting account of how, throughout human history, people always have outgrown the carrying capacity of their environment, which has led to war.

Ultimately, though, LeBlanc's point of view is reassuring and optimistic. As he explains the roots of warfare in human history, he also demonstrates that warfare today has far less impact than it did in the past. He also argues that, as awareness of these patterns and the advantages of modern technology increase, so does our ability to avoid war in the future.

The Body of Faith offers an understanding of Judaism through religious sensitivity and philosophical insight. Basing his work on biblical and rabbinic sources, twentieth-century philosophy, and Christian theology, Michael Wyschogrod focuses on the depiction and personification of God. Rather than looking at God as a depersonalized omniscient being, Wyschogrod depicts God as engaged in human history and as a partner in a covenant with the Jewish people.

THE PHENOMENAL BESTSELLER FROM THE AUTHOR OF HELGOLAND AND THE ORDER OF TIME

'The perfect antidote to the fluff and nonsense around right now. Learn how the world is and how you might just fit in' Simon Mayo

'By God, it's beguiling' New Statesman

These seven short lessons guide us, with simplicity and clarity, through the scientific revolution that shook physics in the twentieth century and still continues to shake us today. In this mind-bending overview of modern physics, Carlo Rovelli explains Einstein's theory of general relativity, quantum mechanics, black holes, the complex architecture of the universe, elementary particles, gravity, and the nature of the mind. Not since Richard Feynman's celebrated Six Easy Pieces has physics been so vividly, intelligently and entertainingly revealed.

Translated by Simon Carnell and Erica Segre

Sparking vigorous debate in the sciences, The Social Conquest of Earth upends “the famous theory that evolution naturally encourages creatures to put family first” (Discover). Refashioning the story of human evolution, Wilson draws on his remarkable knowledge of biology and social behavior to demonstrate that group selection, not kin selection, is the premier driving force of human evolution. In a work that James D. Watson calls “a monumental exploration of the biological origins of the human condition,” Wilson explains how our innate drive to belong to a group is both a “great blessing and a terrible curse” (Smithsonian). Demonstrating that the sources of morality, religion, and the creative arts are fundamentally biological in nature, the renowned Harvard University biologist presents us with the clearest explanation ever produced as to the origin of the human condition and why it resulted in our domination of the Earth’s biosphere.