Behave: The Biology Of Humans At Our Best And Worst

Behave: The Biology Of Humans At Our Best And Worst

The New York Times bestseller?It?s no exaggeration to say that?ehave?s one of the best nonfiction books I?ve ever read.? -David P. Barash,?he Wall Street Journal"It has my vote for science book of the year.? -Parul Sehgal, The New York Times"Hands-down one of the best books I?ve read in years. I loved it." -Dina Temple-Raston,?he?ashington PostNamed a Best Book of the Year by?he Washington?ost?nd?he Wall Street?ournal?rom the celebrated neurobiologist and primatologist, a landmark, genre-defining examination of human behavior, both good and bad, and an answer to the question:?hy do we do the things we do?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 evolutionary legacy. ?nd so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. A behavior occurs--whether an example of humans at our best, worst, or somewhere in between. What went on in a person's brain a second before the behavior happened? Then Sapolsky pulls out to a slightly larger field of vision, a little earlier in time: What sight, sound, or smell caused the nervous system to produce that behavior? And then, what hormones acted hours to days earlier to change how responsive that individual is to the stimuli that triggered 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: How was that behavior influenced by structural changes in the nervous system over the preceding months, by that person's adolescence, childhood, fetal life, and then back to his or her genetic makeup? Finally, he expands the view to encompass factors larger than one individual. How did culture shape that individual's group, what ecological factors millennia old formed that culture? And on and on, back to evolutionary factors millions of years old.?he result is one of the most dazzling tours d'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.ReviewOne of The Washington Post's 10 Best Books of 2017"Sapolsky?as created an immensely readable, often hilarious romp through the multiple worlds of psychology, primatology, sociology and neurobiology to explain why we behave the way we do. It is hands-down one of the best books I?ve read in years. I loved it."-Dina Temple-Raston, The?ashington Post?It?s no exaggeration to say that?ehave?s one of the best nonfiction books I?ve ever read.? -David P. Barash,?he Wall Street Journal?A quirky, opinionated and magisterial synthesis of psychology and neurobiology that integrates this complex subject more accessibly and completely than ever?. a wild and mind-opening ride into a better understanding of just where our behavior comes from. Darwin would have been thrilled.? -Richard Wrangham,?he New York Times Book Review?[Sapolskly?s] new book is his magnum opus, but is also strikingly different from his earlier work, veering sharply toward hard science as it looms myriad strands of his ruminations on human behavior. The familiar, enchanting Sapolsky tropes are here-his warm, witty voice, a sleight of hand that unfolds the mysteries of cogni