100 Best Evolution Books of All Time
We've researched and ranked the best evolution books in the world, based on recommendations from world experts, sales data, and millions of reader ratings. Learn more
How did our species succeed in the battle for dominance? Why did our foraging ancestors come together to create cities and kingdoms? How did we come to believe in gods, nations and human rights; to trust money, books and laws; and to be enslaved by bureaucracy, timetables and consumerism? And what will our world be like in the millennia to come?
In Sapiens, Dr Yuval Noah Harari spans the whole of human history, from the very first humans to walk the... more
Richard BransonOne example of a book that has helped me to #ReadToLead this year is Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind by Yuval Noah Harari. While the book came out a few years ago now, I got around to it this year, and am very glad I did. I’ve always been fascinated in what makes humans human, and how people are constantly evolving, changing and growing. The genius of Sapiens is that it takes some daunting,... (Source)
Reid HoffmanA grand theory of humanity. (Source)
Barack Obamaeval(ez_write_tag([[250,250],'theceolibrary_com-leader-2','ezslot_7',164,'0','1'])); Fact or fiction, the president knows that reading keeps the mind sharp. He also delved into these non-fiction reads. (Source)
Why...
moreCharles T. Mungerrecommends this book in the second edition of Poor Charlie’s Almanack. (Source)
Matt RidleyTurned evolutionary biology on its head and was written like a great detective story. (Source)
Phil LibinHad a profound influence on me pretty early on. (Source)
Yet The Origin of Species (1859) is also a humane and inspirational vision of ecological interrelatedness, revealing the complex mutual interdependencies between animal and plant life, climate and physical environment, and—by implication—within the human world.
Written for the general reader, in a style... more
Neil deGrasse TysonWhich books should be read by every single intelligent person on planet? [...] On the Origin of Species (Darwin) [to learn of our kinship with all other life on Earth]. If you read all of the above works you will glean profound insight into most of what has driven the history of the western world. (Source)
Mark KurlanskyIt is one of the most important books written, and I always urge people to read it. (Source)
Darren Aronofsky[Darren Aronofsky recommended this book on the podcast "The Tim Ferriss Show".] (Source)
Bill GatesFascinating.... Lays a foundation for understanding human history. (Source)
Yuval Noah HarariA book of big questions, and big answers. The book turned me from a historian of medieval warfare into a student of humankind. (Source)
Neil Shubin, a leading paleontologist and professor of anatomy who discovered Tiktaalik-the "missing link" that made headlines around the world in April 2006-tells the story of evolution by tracing the organs of the human body back millions of... more
In The Greatest Show on Earth Richard Dawkins takes on creationists, including followers of ‘Intelligent Design’ and all... more
In all the current highly publicized debates about creationism and its descendant "intelligent design," there is an element of the controversy that is rarely mentioned—the "evidence," the empirical truth of evolution by natural selection. Even Richard Dawkins and Stephen Jay Gould, while extolling the beauty of evolution and examining case studies, have not focused on the evidence itself. Yet the proof is vast, varied, and magnificent, drawn from many different fields of science. Scientists are observing species... more
Cover note: Each copy of the anniversary edition of The Blind Watchmaker features a unique biomorph. No two covers are exactly alike.
Acclaimed as the most influential work on evolution written in the last hundred years, The Blind Watchmaker offers an inspiring and accessible introduction to one of the most important scientific discoveries of all time. A brilliant and controversial book which demonstrates that evolution by natural selection - the unconscious, automatic, blind yet essentially... more
James RandiThey talk about the blind watchmaker not being able to make a watch, but if you’re given an almost infinite number of combinations and permutations of materials and situations, the world will come about. Or it may not. In our case, it came about. You’re here, I’m here, and I’m very happy about that. (Source)
Jerry CoyneIf I had to pick just one self-contained book that lays out Dawkins’s philosophy and methodology, and shows his literary skills, I would have to pick this one. (Source)
Tom ClarkeDawkins brought Darwin up to date, explaining evolution in a way that incorporates our understanding of genetics and heredity. (Source)
In prose that is at once frank, entertaining, and deeply informed, The New Yorker writer Elizabeth Kolbert tells us why and how human beings have altered life on the planet in a way no species has before.... more
Barack ObamaThe president also released a list of his summer favorites back in 2015: All That Is, James Salter The Sixth Extinction, Elizabeth Kolbert The Lowland, Jhumpa Lahiri Between the World and Me, Ta-Nehisi Coates Washington: A Life, Ron Chernow All the Light We Cannot See, Anthony Doerr (Source)
Bill GatesThe Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History, by Elizabeth Kolbert. Climate change is a big problem—one of the biggest we’ll face this century—but it’s not the only environmental concern on the horizon. Humans are putting down massive amounts of pavement, moving species around the planet, over-fishing and acidifying the oceans, changing the chemical composition of rivers, and more. Natural... (Source)
Jeff Bezos"In his autobiography, Walmart's founder expounds on the principles of discount retailing and discusses his core values of frugality and a bias for action — a willingness to try a lot of things and make many mistakes. Bezos included both in Amazon's corporate values," Brad Stone writes. (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Evolution books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Over the past century humankind has managed to do the impossible and rein in famine, plague, and war. This may seem hard to accept, but, as Harari explains in his trademark style—thorough, yet riveting—famine, plague and war have been transformed from incomprehensible and... more
Richard BransonI certainly wouldn’t consider myself a big reader of paleontology or anthropology – not good words for us dyslexics! – but I enjoy learning about how society has unfolded and history has developed in an exciting, easy to read way. The sequel, Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow, is a fascinating look into the future too. While these aren’t traditional business or leadership books, they are all... (Source)
Bill GatesHarari’s new book is as challenging and readable as Sapiens. Rather than looking back, as Sapiens does, it looks to the future. I don’t agree with everything the author has to say, but he has written a thoughtful look at what may be in store for humanity. (Source)
Vinod KhoslaNot that I agree with all of it, but it is still mind-bending speculation about our future as a follow-up to a previous favorite, Sapiens. It’s directionally right. (Source)
Susan JacobyRichard Dawkins is very funny. One of the reasons for reading The God Delusion is that it will disabuse you of the idea – which is a common stereotype of atheists – that they are utterly humourless. You hear this over and over again. I’m often invited to college campuses to give lectures, and often they’re religious schools – not fundamentalist schools, but colleges of a historically religious... (Source)
Vote Dem For The Planet@KimBledsoe14 @Goodbye_Jesus @Ian313f There were a lot of rebels and drifters in those days against the repressive regime. They had followers. Have you read “The God Delusion”? Great book. (Source)
Antonio EramThis book was recommended by Antonio when asked for titles he would recommend to young people interested in his career path. (Source)
Amanda Palmer[Amanda Palmer recommended this book in the book "Tools of Titans".] (Source)
Fabrice GrindaI have lots of books to recommend, but they are not related to my career path. The only one that is remotely related is Peter Thiel’s Zero to One. That said here are books I would recommend. (Source)
David GoldbergWhat I really liked about A Short History of Nearly Everything is that it gives an excellent account of a lot of the personalities and the interconnectedness of important discoveries in cosmology and elsewhere. He does such a great job of bringing together our understanding of cosmology, evolution, paleontology, and geology in a very, very fluid way. (Source)
Mark ZuckerbergThis book aims to tell a history of humanity from the perspective of genetics rather than sociology. This should complement the other broad histories I've read this year, as well as follow "Energy" well in focusing on science. I've wanted to read Matt Ridley's books for a while. His recent book "The Rational Optimist" about how progress and the economy evolve is also near the top of my... (Source)
Naval RavikantGetting into the more evolution, science kind of books, I really highly, highly recommend picking up Genome [...]. (Source)
Ryan HolidayThis is probably the definitive beginner text on evolutionary psychology and one of the easiest to get into. It’s a little depressing at first, realizing how ruthless many of our so called “good” feelings are. But then you realize that truth is better than ignorance, and you emerge seeing the world as it truly is for the first time. (Source)
Entrelazando ciencia, historia y vivencias personales, Mukherjee hace un recorrido por el nacimiento, el crecimiento, la influencia y el futuro de una de las ideas más poderosas y peligrosas de la historia de la ciencia: el gen, la unidad fundamental de la herencia, y la unidad básica de toda la información biológica. Desde Aristóteles y Pitágoras, pasando por los descubrimientos relegados de Mendel, la revolución de... more
Bill Gates"Mukherjee wrote this book for a lay audience, because he knows that the new genome technologies are at the cusp of affecting us all in profound ways," Gates wrote. Mukherjee is what Gates calls a "quadruple threat." He's a practicing physician, teacher, researcher, and author. (Source)
Amit Paranjape@vikramsathaye @DrSidMukherjee @kiranshaw Great book. (Source)
Bryan JohnsonA great book. (Source)
Carl ZimmerI chose this because I think it expresses a really important idea. Richard Dawkins wrote this book not long after The Selfish Gene came out. That was his landmark book, in which he argued for a gene-centric view of evolution. Genes build bodies. They build traits, which are known as phenotypes, in order to be replicated in the next generation. (Source)
Peter AtkinsShows a highly imaginative approach to understanding the nature of the biosphere. A very clever book. (Source)
Richard ForteyRegarded almost as a demi-god, Gould’s written a number of good books. He writes extremely well, but the book that touched me most was this one. (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Evolution books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Naval RavikantGetting into the more evolution, science kind of books, I really highly, highly recommend picking up [...] The Red Queen. (Source)
"It's no exaggeration to say that Behave is one of the best nonfiction books I've ever read." --David P. Barash, The 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, The Washington Post
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal more
Sam HarrisI highly recommend. It really is the most accessible discussion of brain science you will find. (Source)
Vinod KhoslaAmong the best insights into our brain and behavior. A top of the charts for me for this year, along with Scale. (Source)
Bryan Johnson[Bryan Johnson recommended this book on Twitter.] (Source)
Kenneth MillerSean Carroll is a developmental biologist. He uses molecular techniques to study the ways in which the embryo develops and uses specialised tissues and structures. His book actually comes, he claims, from a question one of his children asked him. The question was: Is the zebra a white animal with black stripes, or a black animal with white stripes? Which when you think about it is a very... (Source)
Where does DNA come from? What is consciousness? How did the eye evolve? Drawing on a treasure trove of new scientific knowledge, Nick Lane expertly reconstructs evolution’s history by describing its ten greatest inventions—from sex and warmth to death—resulting in a stunning account of nature’s ingenuity. 20 figures less
Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)
Dan HooperEverybody knows Hawking’s greatest contributions: understanding that black holes radiate light and other particles, that they contain entropy and all these things that no one imagined before him. Hawking and Roger Penrose also worked out the Big Bang singularity, the very moment of creation. To hear him describe some of these things with his own word choices, his own phrasing—not to mention his... (Source)
Adam Hart-DavisWhen Stephen Hawking wrote A Brief History of Time..his publisher told him that every equation he left in would halve the number of readers (Source)
Kenneth MillerThis book is an unusual recommendation for me because it was written on commission. About a decade ago, the [PBS] scientific documentary television series Nova put together an eight-hour series called Evolution.They had some help from the BBC with this. They felt that they needed a companion book for the series. So they knocked on the door of the person who is, in my opinion, the best science... (Source)
“Sex at Dawn irrefutably shows that what is obvious—that human beings, both male and female, are lustful—is true, and has always been so…. The more dubious its evidentiary basis and lack of connection... more
Noah KaganA few months ago, I was drinking a Noah’s Mill whiskey (cute) with my good buddy Brian Balfour and talking about life... During the conversation, we got on the topic of books that changed our lives. I want to share them with you. I judge a book's success if a year later I'm still using at least 1 thing from the book. (Source)
Esther Perel[Esther Perel recommended this book as an answer to "What are some [resources] for couples who want to explore having a more “monogamish” relationship?"] (Source)
In the pages of this highly readable narrative, Sean Carroll guides the general... more
Beth ShapiroThere are a lot of books out there about evolution and extinction. I chose this one because he focusses specifically on what we can learn about evolution by looking at genome sequences, at DNA sequences, which is what I do. (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Evolution books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Barry EstabrookMichael Pollan looks at food production through four meals. One is a fast-food meal, the other is an industrial-scale organic meal, then there is a small-scale organic meal and finally he actually goes out and either grows or kills, in the case of the meat, the entire meal himself. That is the narrative. (Source)
Gabriel CoarnaMichael Pollan's "The Omnivore's Dilemma" --more precisely, the first 3rd of it-- was what first made me realize how badly the Earth, as an ecosystem, is out of balance. (Source)
Tristram StuartHe concludes that there is food out there that tastes good, is good for us and is good for the planet. (Source)
Jerry CoyneIt is the one book that lays out in great detail some of the strongest evidence for evolution, which is the fossil record. (Source)
In The Song of the Dodo, we follow Quammen's keen intellect through the ideas, theories, and experiments of prominent naturalists of the last two centuries. We trail after him as he travels the world, tracking the subject of island biogeography, which... more
Isabella TreeQuammen’s wondrous peregrination of islands takes us on a journey of evolutions and extinctions in order to illustrate how like islands our continents have become. (Source)
Sean B CarrollThe book covers the role that islands have played in our thinking about how nature works. (Source)
What drives species to evolve? How can intricate structures such as the human eye, the spider's web or the wings of birds develop, seemingly by chance? Regarding evolution's most complex achievements as peaks on a metaphorical mountain, Climbing Mount Improbable reveals the ways in which the theory of natural selection can precisely explain the beautiful, bizarre... more
Winner of the Los Angeles Times Book Prize
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 this dramatic story of groundbreaking scientific research, Jonathan Weiner follows these... more
To explain the mystery of how life evolved on Earth, Nick Lane explores the deep link between energy and genes.
The Earth teems with life: in its oceans, forests, skies and cities. Yet there’s a black hole at the heart of biology. We do not know why complex life is the way it is, or, for that matter, how life first began. In The Vital Question, award-winning author and biochemist Nick Lane radically reframes evolutionary history, putting forward a solution to conundrums that have puzzled generations of scientists.
For two and a half billion years, from the very origins...
moreBill GatesNick is one of those original thinkers who makes you say: More people should know about this guy's work. He is trying to right a scientific wrong by getting people to fully appreciate the role that energy plays in all living things. Even if the details of Nick's work turn out to be wrong, I suspect his focus on energy will be seen as an important contribution to our understanding of where we come... (Source)
Mark ZuckerbergMy second book of the year is The Better Angels of Our Nature by Steven Pinker. It's a timely book about how and why violence has steadily decreased throughout our history, and how we can continue this trend. Recent events might make it seem like violence and terrorism are more common than ever, so it's worth understanding that all violence -- even terrorism -- is actually decreasing over time.... (Source)
Eric SchmidtWhen you finish [this book], which takes a long time, you conclude that the world is in a much, much better place than it has been in the past. (Source)
Bill GatesYong succeeds in his intention to give us a 'grander view of life' and does so without falling prey to grand, unifying explanations that are far too simplistic. He presents our inner ecosystems in all their wondrous messiness and complexity. And he offers realistic optimism that our growing knowledge of the human microbiome will lead to great new opportunities for enhancing our health. (Source)
Were dinosaurs really dumber than lizards? Why, after all, are roughly the same number of men and women born into the world? What led the famous Dr. Down to his theory of mongolism, and its racist residue? What do the panda's magical "thumb" and the sea turtle's perilous migration... more
—Helena Cronin, author of The Ant and The Peacock
“A mind blowing, mind openingexpos. Pinker's profoundly positive arguments for the compatibility of biology and humanism are unrivalled for their scope and depth and should be mandatory, if disquieting, reading.”
—Patricia Goldman-Rakic, past president of the Society for Neuroscience
In The Blank Slate,... more
David BrooksAn argument against the old view that there is no such thing as human nature, that we’re all culturally determined. He brings together a ton of evidence that that’s wrong. (Source)
In a book that illuminates, as never before, the evolutionary story of the human body, Daniel Lieberman deftly examines the major transformations that contributed key adaptations to the body: the advent of bipedalism; the shift to a non-fruit-based diet; the rise of... more
Suzana Herculano-HouzelDan Lieberman puts the brain into the context of the body as a whole. (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Evolution books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Naval RavikantGetting into the more evolution, science kind of books, I really highly, highly recommend picking up [...] Origins of Virtue. (Source)
Paul SeabrightYes, exactly. In one sense Matt Ridley was restating the message which was already there in The Descent of Man but which had rather been forgotten. What this book did was popularise the idea that cooperation can indeed be favoured by natural selection. (Source)
Richard Dawkins, bestselling author and the world’s most celebrated evolutionary biologist, has spent his career elucidating the many wonders of science. Here, he takes a broader approach and uses his unrivaled explanatory powers to illuminate the ways in which the world really works. Filled with clever thought experiments and jaw-dropping facts, The Magic of Reality explains a stunningly wide range of natural phenomena: How old... more
Bill GatesDawkins, an evolutionary biologist at Oxford, has a gift for making science enjoyable. This book is as accessible as the TV series Cosmos is for younger audiences—and as relevant for older audiences. It’s an engaging, well-illustrated science textbook offering compelling answers to big questions, like “how did the universe form?” and “what causes earthquakes?” It’s also a plea for readers of all... (Source)
Vote Dem For The Planet@EJDuboisL7444 @realDonaldTrump It’s a great book, like all Dawkins’ books. (Source)
Although mammals and birds are widely regarded as the smartest creatures on earth, it has lately become clear that a very distant branch of the tree of life has also sprouted higher intelligence: the cephalopods, consisting of the squid, the cuttlefish, and above all the octopus. In captivity, octopuses have been known to identify individual human keepers, raid neighboring tanks for food, turn off lightbulbs by spouting jets of water, plug drains, and make daring escapes. How is it that a creature with such gifts evolved through an evolutionary lineage so radically distant from our own?...
moreSusan BlackmoreAn enjoyable read that will make you think. (Source)
Since scientists first read the human genome in 2001, it has been subject to all sorts of claims, counterclaims, and myths. In fact, as Adam Rutherford explains, our genomes should be read not as instruction manuals, but as... more
Jim Al-KhaliliRutherford tells the story of our genetic makeup, how it has shaped human history and what history can now tell us about our genes. It’s a hugely illuminating and fresh take on who we are and how we came to be. (Source)
When the Beagle sailed out of Devonport on 27 December 1831, Charles Darwin was twenty-two and setting off on the voyage of a lifetime.
It was to last five years and transform him from an amiable and somewhat aimless young man into a scientific celebrity. Even more vitally, it was to set in motion the intellectual currents that culminated in the arrival of The Origin of Species in Victorian drawing-rooms in 1859. His journal, reprinted here in a shortened version, is vivid and immediate, showing us a naturalist making... more
Tom ClarkeDarwin sees Valparaiso destroyed by an earthquake erupting and is horrified by the brutality of nature. (Source)
In The Origin of Species, Charles Darwin refused to discuss human evolution, believing the subject too 'surrounded with prejudices'. He had been reworking his notes since the 1830s, but only with trepidation did he finally publish The Descent of Man in 1871. The book notoriously put apes in our family tree and... more
Peter SingerYes, in the sense that we are descendants of other animals. I like The Descent of Man better than The Origin of Species because Darwin is prepared to be much bolder in The Descent of Man. In The Origin of Species he was still a little bit timid. He presents the idea of how species develop, and that is what we now refer to as evolution. But he didn’t apply it to humans. He really didn’t dare to... (Source)
Caspar HendersonDarwin’s books are a series of masterpieces. From early works such as The Structure and Distribution of Coral Reefs in 1842, to his last, which has the unpromising title The Formation of Vegetable Mould through the Action of Worms, published in 1881, he gives us a truly majestic view of the workings of even the smallest life forms which, however humble they may appear, have global consequences. (Source)
How smart are you? If that question doesn't spark a dozen more questions in your mind (like "What do you mean by 'smart,'" "How do I measure it" and "Who's asking?"), then The Mismeasure of Man, Stephen Jay Gould's masterful demolition of the IQ industry, should be required reading. Gould's brilliant, funny, engaging prose dissects the motivations behind those who would judge intelligence, and hence worth, by cranial size, convolutions, or score on extremely narrow tests. How did scientists decide that... more
Carol DweckI was raised in the heyday of the IQ craze. My sixth grade teacher seated us around the room in IQ order and assigned all privileges on the basis of IQ. This book made me realise the effect it had on us and I saw that my work could play a role in bringing that era to a close. (Source)
Jerry CoyneHe had this Marxist viewpoint towards biology which in the end made him almost reject natural selection. (Source)
Susan GelmanThis is a classic book. It was published in 1981 and got a lot of attention when it came out. Gould just does this beautiful job of laying out the ‘biology as destiny’ idea – and then ripping it to shreds. (Source)
Angela SainiThis is a book that demonstrates the misogynistic lens through which some male biologists have viewed the past. Morris routinely and repeatedly peddles the view that women have evolved to be monogamous, stay-at-home caregivers while men have pushed up human intelligence through their actions as hunters and providers. (Source)
Stephane GrandWhen a look back at my career path, it is the one of an entrepreneur. I have built various businesses, from accounting and financial advisory firms to tech and security businesses. I have also spent most of my adult life in China, a country that is quite hostile to foreigners and very unfair. I have accepted to suffer the hardships of building my business without any investment from anybody, and... (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Evolution books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Richard BransonToday is World Book Day, a wonderful opportunity to address this #ChallengeRichard sent in by Mike Gonzalez of New Jersey: Make a list of your top 65 books to read in a lifetime. (Source)
Ante ShodaIt explains 14 billion years of the evolution of the universe, a sort of engineering experiment on the largest possible scale. It spans all scales of space and time, describing everything from the largest scales of the universe to the smallest scales of molecules and atoms. It’s a good book for putting everything in perspective. (Source)
In this classic, the world's expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution. The Language Instinct received... more
Simon Baron-CohenIt’s a really wonderful example of what you can do: take research into something as fundamental to human nature as language and make it accessible to a wide audience. (Source)
Lane GreeneThere are two achievements in this book. One is to smuggle Linguistics 101 into a popular book, which is just fantastic. The other is his own argument about the nature of language, and the title says it all. (Source)
Consciousness, morality, creativity, language, and art: these are the traits that make us human. Scientists have traditionally explained these qualities as merely a side effect of surplus brain size, but Miller argues that they were sexual attractors, not side effects. He bases his... more
World renowned scientist Carl Sagan and acclaimed author Ann Druyan have written a Roots for the human species, a lucid and riveting account of how humans got to be the way we are. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is a thrilling saga that starts with the origin of the Earth. It shows with humor and drama that many of our key traits--self-awareness, technology, family ties, submission to authority,... more
Essa "hipótese do cozimento" afirma que um antepassado imediato do Homo sapiens, o Homo erectus, dominou o fogo e o cozimento há cerca de 1,8 milhões de anos, permitindo que tivéssemos acesso tanto a nutrientes quanto a hábitos que nos mudariam para sempre.
Este não é... more
Suzana Herculano-HouzelEssentially what Richard proposes is that the turning point in human evolutionary history was the invention of cooking. (Source)
Steven RaichlenPeople have deep emotions about grilling. The act of lighting a fire and creating a barbecue seems to bring a sense of comfort, satisfaction and community that you just don’t get with other cooking methods. Why? There is the pleasure of sitting around a fire, the incredible aromas and flavours you get with cooking over fire and then there’s the long human history of open-fire cooking. (Source)
Science is on the defensive. Half of Americans reject the theory of evolution and "Intelligent Design" campaigns are gaining ground. Classroom by classroom, creationism is overthrowing biology.
In Why Darwin Matters, bestselling author Michael Shermer explains how the newest brand of creationism appeals to our predisposition to look for a designer behind life's complexity. Shermer decodes the scientific evidence to show that evolution... more
In the mid-1970s, scientists began using DNA sequences to reexamine the history of all life. Perhaps the most startling discovery to come out of this new field—the study of life’s diversity and relatedness at the molecular level—is horizontal gene transfer (HGT), or the movement of genes across species lines. It turns out that HGT has been widespread and important.... more
Robert Macfarlane@josephQED @abinadi Quammen’s is a great book. (Source)
Barbara KiserQuammen is one of the great science journalists, and this is a monument of a book—a masterful retelling of how the ‘tree of life’ was recast in the twentieth century by a band of original thinkers. (Source)
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 societies, and how warlike were they? When did our ancestors first leave Africa, and by what route did they leave? By eloquently solving these and numerous other mysteries, Wade...
moreDon't have time to read the top Evolution books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Ever Since Darwin, Stephen Jay Gould's first book, has sold more than a quarter of a million copies. Like all succeeding collections by this unique writer, it brings the art of the scientific essay to unparalleled heights. less
The Singularity Is Near portrays what life will be like after this event--a human-machine civilization where our experiences shift from real reality to virtual reality and where our intelligence becomes nonbiological and... more
Mark O'ConnellI wouldn’t be the first to look at him this way but I read Kurzweil’s work as essentially a work of religious mysticism. I think there’s no other way to read it, really. (Source)
Antonio EramThis book was recommended by Antonio when asked for titles he would recommend to young people interested in his career path. (Source)
Steve AokiIt opened me up to the idea of science fiction becoming science fact. (Source)
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 both the Ice Man's discovery and his age, which was put at over five thousand years, fascinated scientists and newspapers throughout the world. But what made Sykes's story particularly... more
At the Water's Edge will change the way you think about your place in the world. The awesome journey of life's transformation from the first microbes 4 billion years ago to Homo sapiens today is an epic that we are only now beginning to grasp. Magnificent and bizarre, it is the story of how we got here, what we left behind, and what we brought with us.
We all know about evolution, but it still seems absurd that our ancestors were fish. Darwin's idea of natural selection was the key to solving generation-to-generation evolution --... more
Beth ShapiroI should start by saying that in my field, genetics, stuff that people publish is generally out of date within six months. The kind of literature I read is really fast-moving, short papers published in journals, and there’s often a rush to get them out. There are a few books that everybody reads. I chose this book, The Diversity of Life as E. O. Wilson is really well known as the king of... (Source)
In this fascinating and thought-provoking book, Nick Lane brings together the latest research in this exciting field to show how our growing insight into mitochondria has shed light on how complex life evolved, why sex arose (why don't we just bud?), and why we age and die. These findings are of... more
David George HaskellThrough the stories of four familiar plant species–apples, tulips, marijuana, and potatoes–he demolishes the erroneous impression that we’re in charge. (Source)
Kenneth CoxYou can’t fail to be fascinated by this exposition of the motivations of plants to cuddle up to humans. One of several excellent Michael Pollan books, it’s a fun read. (Source)
less
Don't have time to read the top Evolution books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
His starting point is moral intuition—the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt... more
A.J. JacobsAll about trying to figure out the gap between the red and blue states – Republican and Democrat – and it’s really interesting. (Source)
Akin Oyebode@eggheader @OnemuVictor1 @JonHaidt Abeg order two. I read Righteous Mind which he also wrote, and that was a very fascinating book. (Source)
Andrew M. MwendaThe best work on this is a book by Jonathan Haidt “The Righteous Mind: Why good People are Divided by Religion and Politics.” He argues that human beings have deeply entrenched moral intuitions which guide their assessment of reality. Facts matter very little if at all. (Source)
In a major new Afterword for this edition, Behe explains that... more
With characteristic attention to detail, Stephen Jay Gould first describes the content and discusses the history and origins of the three core commitments of classical Darwinism: that natural selection works on organisms, not genes or species; that it is almost exclusively the mechanism of adaptive evolutionary change; and that these changes are incremental, not... more
Just 150 years ago, most of our world was an unexplored wilderness. Our sense of its age was vague and vastly off the mark, and much of the knowledge of our own species’ history was a set of fantastic myths and fairy tales. In the tradition of The Microbe Hunters and Gods, Graves, and Scholars, Sean Carroll leads a rousing voyage that recounts the most important discoveries in two centuries of natural history: from... more
She Has Her Mother's Laugh presents a profoundly original perspective on what we pass along from generation to generation. Charles Darwin played a crucial part in turning heredity into a scientific question, and yet he failed spectacularly to answer it. The birth of genetics in the early 1900s seemed to do precisely that. Gradually, people translated their old notions about heredity... more
Suze KunduSpotted this book on sale at @calacademy this evening - packed with a whole host of LGBT+ role models, it really is worth grabbing a copy to find out about some really awesome unsung heroes. (@carlzimmer is just hiding on the shelf below - also an excellent read!) https://t.co/EA7g8GoSvF (Source)
Isolated by the most savage terrain in North America, the reclusive Tarahumara Indians of Mexico’s deadly Copper Canyons are custodians of a... more
Ed StaffordAn honour to be asked to do an impromptu little talk tonight after #christophermcdougall. Great to see the big man in the flesh in the UK. #BornToRun was a book that definitely changed the path of my life. #legend @vivobarefoot #barefootrunning https://t.co/3QgVKZ0OQ4 (Source)
Turia PittIf [people are] interested in running, I give them [this book]. (Source)
Dan Kaminsky@DanielMiessler @balajis How The Mind Works being the formative book of my intellectual career makes this particularly interesting. I don’t always agree with Pinker but that’s not a requirement. (Source)
Don't have time to read the top Evolution books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
Yong, whose humor is as evident as his erudition, prompts us to look at ourselves and our animal companions in a new light—less as... more
Bill GatesHelped me see microorganisms in a whole new light. (Source)
Carl ZimmerHe will talk, for example, about a male spider that throws himself into the jaws of a female as they mate. She will actually devour him while he is still mating. (Source)
Environmental damage, climate change, globalization, rapid population growth, and unwise political choices were all factors in the demise of societies around the world, but some found solutions and persisted. As in Guns, Germs, and Steel, Diamond traces the fundamental pattern of catastrophe, and weaves an all-encompassing global thesis through a series of... more
Bill GatesI found this to be an interesting follow-up to the excellent Guns, Germs, and Steel. It examines the downfall of some of history's greatest civilizations. (Source)
Matthew YglesiasI wanted to get a book on my list that is actually enjoyable to read, so not everything is quite so dry and dull as a narrative. I also wanted to include something that reflects the growing importance of environmental and ecological concerns to progressive politics in America. This is relatively new to the agenda – it’s only been in the last 30 to 35 years. But going forward, one of the most... (Source)
Stefan LessardHe should read this book I’m almost finished with. Jared Diamond is one of my favorite historical authors. https://t.co/f9JLYlsc4v https://t.co/KtPgMZaWen (Source)
Referring to the defensive moves that white people make when challenged racially, white fragility is characterized by emotions such as anger, fear, and guilt and by behaviors including argumentation and silence. These behaviors, in turn, function to reinstate white racial equilibrium and prevent any meaningful cross-racial dialogue. In this in-depth exploration,... more
Elizabeth C. MclaughlinI've recommended the book White Fragility on here many times, and this interview is a great place to start. If you're a white person who believes you're not racist, please read this article. And then go read the book. https://t.co/S5plH3wS5m (Source)
Marshall Kirkpatrick@jhagel This is a great book btw! (Source)
Todd Nesloney@SarahSuggs13 I love that book, have spoken with the author, and did an entire staff book study. Again, had you even tried to see my work that I do, you'd have learned that. You seek to divide and that is it. Great lesson for our students. (Source)
"Extraordinary. . . . Anyone with the slightest interest in biology should read this book."--The New York Times Book Review
"A marvelous museum of the past four billion years on earth--capacious, jammed with treasures, full of learning and wide-eyed wonder."--The Boston Globe
From its origins on the still-forming planet to the recent emergence of Homo sapiens--one of the world's leading paleontologists offers an absorbing account of how and why life on earth developed as it did. Interlacing the... more
Massive technological innovations now allow scientists to extract and analyze ancient DNA as never before, and it has become clear--in part from David Reich's own contributions to the field--that genomics is as important a means of understanding the human past as archeology, linguistics, and the written word. Now, in The New Science of the Human Past,... more
Nassim Nicholas TalebI will write a longer review, but this is a monument, not just a book. And the beginning of a new cultural program. On a scale of 0 to 100, paternity tests count as 99.99 and written/oral history should count for .01. Apply that to populations. That’s plain statistics/probability. We are seeing science in action: information theory displaces BS, the handwaving just so stories we got from... (Source)
For many years, de Waal has observed chimpanzees soothe distressed neighbors and bonobos share their food. Now he delivers fascinating fresh evidence for the seeds of ethical behavior in primate societies that further cements the case for the biological origins of human fairness. Interweaving vivid tales... more
Don't have time to read the top Evolution books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.
It has long been believed that science and faith cannot mingle. Faith rejects the rational, while science restricts us to a life with no meaning beyond the physical. It is an irreconcilable war between two polar-opposite ways of thinking and living. Written for believers, agnostics, and atheists alike, The Language of God provides a testament to the power of faith in the midst of suffering without faltering from its... more
Dominic D'AgostinoIt really inspired me because I had no idea that a scientist of his stature could have such a devout faith. (Source)
In this groundbreaking book, Dr. David Sinclair, leading world authority on genetics and longevity, reveals a bold new theory for why we age. As he writes: “Aging is a disease, and that disease is treatable.”
This book takes us to the frontlines of research many from Dr. David Sinclair’s own lab at Harvard—that demonstrate how we can slow down, or even reverse, aging. The key is activating newly... more
Vinod KhoslaReveals incredible scientific breakthroughs about aging and ways we can slow down, or even reverse, the process. (Source)
Vinod KhoslaReveals incredible scientific breakthroughs about aging and ways we can slow down, or even reverse, the process. (Source)
Dave AspreyPrepare to have your mind blown. You are holding in your hands the precious results of decades of work, as shared by Dr. David Sinclair, the rock star of aging and human longevity. (Source)
Now in an updated edition with two new chapters by the author, The Evolution of Desire presents the latest research in the field,... more
Satoshi KanazawaMen sought youth and physical attractiveness in their mates, whereas women sought resources and status in theirs. (Source)
Bogdana ButnarI don't have favourite books. I equate a favourite something with wanting to do it over and over again and I've never wanted to read a book too many times. I have favourite authors and I have books that changed me in significant ways because they moved me or taught me something or changed my view of the world. So, here's some of those books... (Source)
In this groundbreaking and engaging work of science, world-renowned paleoanthropologist Chris Stringer sets out a new theory of humanity's origin, challenging both the multiregionalists (who hold that modern humans developed from ancient ancestors in different parts of the world) and his own "out of Africa" theory, which maintains that humans emerged rapidly in one small part of Africa and then spread to replace all other humans within and outside the continent.... more
Vlatko VedralWe can explain living systems scientifically very well, but what about human beings? What about the mind? I don’t think we have any ideas in science really how to attack this problem. Because, even defining what the mind or consciousness is, this is still completely open, and in science we have to have a good definition. So now we are not talking about biology any more; we are really talking... (Source)
Mark ZuckerbergMy next book for A Year of Books is The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley. Two of the books I've read this year -- The Better Angels of Our Nature: and Why Nations Fail -- have explored how social and economic progress work together to make the world better. The Better Angels argues for that the two feed off each other, whereas Why Nations Fail argues that social and political progress ultimately... (Source)
Bill GatesIts subject is the history of humanity, focusing on why our species has succeeded and how we should think about the future. (Source)
Marc AndreessenSparkling explanation of how the economy evolves, producing the glorious cornucopia of goods and services available all around us. How to feel good about the future even in dark times. (Source)
Christmas, 1859. Just one month after the publication of On the Origin of Species, Charles Darwin received an unsettling letter. He had expected criticism; in fact, letters were arriving daily, most expressing outrage and accusations of heresy. But this letter was different. It accused him of... more
When Donald Johanson found a partical skeleton, approximately 3.5 million years old, in a remote region of Ethiopia in 1974, a headline-making controversy was launched that continues on today. Bursting with all the suspense and intrigue of a fast paced adventure novel, here is Johanson’s lively account of the extraordinary... more
Don't have time to read the top Evolution books of all time? Read Shortform summaries.
Shortform summaries help you learn 10x faster by:
- Being comprehensive: you learn the most important points in the book
- Cutting out the fluff: you focus your time on what's important to know
- Interactive exercises: apply the book's ideas to your own life with our educators' guidance.