Joe Henrich's Book Recommendations (Updated for 2021)

Want to know what books Joe Henrich recommends on their reading list? We've researched interviews, social media posts, podcasts, and articles to build a comprehensive list of Joe Henrich's favorite book recommendations of all time.

The Creation of Inequality

How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire

Kent Flannery, Joyce Marcus | 3.97

Flannery and Marcus demonstrate that the rise of inequality was not simply the result of population increase, food surplus, or the accumulation of valuables but resulted from conscious manipulation of the unique social logic that lies at the core of every human group. Reversing the social logic can reverse inequality, they argue, without violence. less

Recommended by Joe Henrich, and 1 others.

Joe HenrichIf we go back before 10-12,000 years ago, current evidence suggests that most societies were relatively egalitarian. (Source)

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Not by Genes Alone

How Culture Transformed Human Evolution

Peter J. Richerson, Robert Boyd | 4.11

Humans are a striking anomaly in the natural world. While we are similar to other mammals in many ways, our behavior sets us apart. Our unparalleled ability to adapt has allowed us to occupy virtually every habitat on earth using an incredible variety of tools and subsistence techniques. Our societies are larger, more complex, and more cooperative than any other mammal's. In this stunning exploration of human adaptation, Peter J. Richerson and Robert Boyd argue that only a Darwinian theory of cultural evolution can explain these unique characteristics.

Not by Genes Alone offers a radical interpretation of human evolution, arguing that our ecological dominance and our singular social systems stem from a psychology uniquely adapted to create complex culture. Richerson and Boyd illustrate here that culture is neither superorganic nor the handmaiden of the genes. Rather, it is essential to human adaptation, as much a part of human biology as bipedal locomotion. Drawing on work in the fields of anthropology, political science, sociology, and economics—and building their case with such fascinating examples as kayaks, corporations, clever knots, and yams that require twelve men to carry them—Richerson and Boyd convincingly demonstrate that culture and biology are inextricably linked, and they show us how to think about their interaction in a way that yields a richer understanding of human nature.

In abandoning the nature-versus-nurture debate as fundamentally misconceived, Not by Genes Alone is a truly original and groundbreaking theory of the role of culture in evolution and a book to be reckoned with for generations to come.

“I continue to be surprised by the number of educated people (many of them biologists) who think that offering explanations for human behavior in terms of culture somehow disproves the suggestion that human behavior can be explained in Darwinian evolutionary terms. Fortunately, we now have a book to which they may be directed for enlightenment . . . . It is a book full of good sense and the kinds of intellectual rigor and clarity of writing that we have come to expect from the Boyd/Richerson stable.”—Robin Dunbar, Nature

“Not by Genes Alone is a valuable and very readable synthesis of a still embryonic but very important subject straddling the sciences and humanities.”—E. O. Wilson, Harvard University

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Recommended by Joe Henrich, and 1 others.

Joe HenrichThey were using mathematical tools from population genetics, epidemiology, and other parts of science to systematically think about how culture transmits from one generation to another. (Source)

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The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition

Michael Tomasello | 4.44

Ambitious and elegant, this book builds a bridge between evolutionary theory and cultural psychology. Michael Tomasello is one of the very few people to have done systematic research on the cognitive capacities of both nonhuman primates and human children. The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition identifies what the differences are, and suggests where they might have come from.

Tomasello argues that the roots of the human capacity for symbol-based culture, and the kind of psychological development that takes place within it, are based in a cluster of uniquely human cognitive... more

Recommended by Helene Guldberg, Joe Henrich, and 2 others.

Helene GuldbergThis book I am equally or even more persuaded by. Tomasello argues that evolution must have endowed us with something uniquely powerful. He says the only possible solution to the puzzle of this explosion in creativity, the only biological mechanism that could have brought about these changes in such a short period of time, is a new capacity for social and cultural transmission. In other words,... (Source)

Joe HenrichHe is interested in something he calls the ‘ratchet’ effect. This is something we only see in humans. (Source)

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Guns, Germs and Steel

The Fates of Human Societies

Jared Diamond Ph.D. | 4.22

Explaining what William McNeill called The Rise of the West has become the central problem in the study of global history. In Guns, Germs, and Steel Jared Diamond presents the biologist's answer: geography, demography, and ecological happenstance. Diamond evenhandedly reviews human history on every continent since the Ice Age at a rate that emphasizes only the broadest movements of peoples and ideas. Yet his survey is binocular: one eye has the rather distant vision of the evolutionary biologist, while the other eye--and his heart--belongs to the people of New Guinea, where he... more

Recommended by Charles T. Munger, Charlie Munger, Bill Gates, and 15 others.

Bill GatesFascinating.... Lays a foundation for understanding human history. (Source)

Daniel EkA brilliant Pulitzer Prize-winning book about how the modern world was formed, analyzing how societies developed differently on different continents. (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)

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The Selfish Gene

Richard Dawkins | 4.32

Inheriting the mantle of revolutionary biologist from Darwin, Watson, and Crick, Richard Dawkins forced an enormous change in the way we see ourselves and the world with the publication of The Selfish Gene. Suppose, instead of thinking about organisms using genes to reproduce themselves, as we had since Mendel's work was rediscovered, we turn it around and imagine that "our" genes build and maintain us in order to make more genes. That simple reversal seems to answer many puzzlers which had stumped scientists for years, and we haven't thought of evolution in the same way since.

Why...

Recommended by Charles T. Munger, Ev Williams, Matt Ridley, and 10 others.

Charles 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)

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Joe Henrich's Top Book Recommendations

The Creation of Inequality

Not by Genes Alone

The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition

Guns, Germs and Steel

The Selfish Gene

Don't have time to read Joe Henrich's favorite books? Read Shortform summaries.