Product Description
During the last ten years so many works have accumulated in the domain of Physicsand so many new theories have been propoundedthat those who follow with interest the progress of scienceand even some professed scholarsabsorbed as they are in their own special studiesfind themselves at sea in a confusion more apparent than real. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (2)

Scientific Philosophy, just as valid as ever, fantastic.
This was written about 101 years ago as I write this review. The science documented in this book is fascinating in it's own right, but that is not the reason you should read this book. The snapshot of science as it existed is also fascinating. The use of the English language is extraordinarily clear to me, even though the phrasing seems quaint. It is very clear that much effort went into word and phrase choices to get just the right idea across. Words are used efficiently. There are no wasted words.
But none of that is what's most important to me. What is really astonishing, and appropriate especially for modern audiences, is the authors philosophical approach to what science really is. Is science the curiosity itch getting scratched? Is science the mundane application of the "scientific method"? Is science the production quotient of associate professors? Is science simply adding to human knowledge? It is none of the above. Science results when engineers ask for "a better light" and the "physicists" labor to get him that. Science results when doctors ask "how does this remedy work?" and the chemical "physicists" labor diligently to figure it out. In his mind, science is mostly physicists. But it also includes the "educated, erudite amateur" who "strives to understand" the modern developments in the scientific world. He states that "complicated physical models" deter "all but the boldest of human minds". He does not criticize the models at all, just notes that all but very bold minds are deterred. What is really cool is that he can see eras in human history where scientists have declared victory over their fields, in that the scientists of historical times seemed to have felt that all of science was laid clear, and that there were no more mysteries to analyze. This scientific hubris has been punished time and again with old theories laid waste with new discoveries. He is completely aware that of all the modern discoveries, many will be laid to waste with more modern work. This is perfectly clear with his many faceted deliberations on the "ether". The "ether" is mentioned again and again. As the scientists of 1909 struggle with the "ether" again and again, it is clear to us in hindsight that the struggles were because there is no ether. I think they understood that of all the possible results of their labors, an understanding that there is no ether at all would have made sense to them, but they really struggled with it.
It is also very interesting to note that almost every theory discussed in the book has a name attached to it. In other words, you wouldn't say "gravitational theory", you would say "gravitational theory of Newton". You wouldn't say, for instance, discovery of the gamma rays. You would say, instead, "discovery of the gamma rays of Madame Curie". In scientific communication, this would immediately let your reader know that you were talking about the Rays that Madame Curie was laboring to investigate, and all she has written about it. The science is, therefore, quite tightly attached to the person and personality of those people who investigated it. Nowadays, with science by committee, hundreds of co-authors, and funding by agencies, this personal attachment to scientific advance is completely gone. Just imagine someone saying, for instance, the "Standard Model" of Feynman of particle physics. Or, the "Black Holes of Hawking". Maybe Hawking's black holes are sufficiently different from the "Chicago School's" black holes, but we just don't speak like that anymore. Reading this book is, therefore, Nostalgic on a very large scale.
I think that this book should be required reading of college students of science and history and communication. It is that important.

Physics of 100 years ago
This is a very nice book which concentrates on what was known in the field of physics in the first decade of the 20th century. When it was written (1909,) radium and X-rays had recently been discovered, and physicists were still trying to explain the mysterious ether. In his forward the author says that the reader need not know anything about physics to understand what he writes, and that is largely true, but the more you know before reading the better you'll understand the details. The table of contents tells exactly what is in each chapter, but it isn't active, so you have to search for what you want. The TOC says that there's an index of names and an index of subjects at the end of the book, but they aren't there.

I love reading these old science books because I find it fascinating to see how much was known about the sciences in previous centuries, and how accurate their findings were. It's interesting to read about things which were believed at the time, but which we now know don't exist, like ether and N-rays. I'm surprised that there's no mention of Einstein in this book, since his Special Theory of Relativity was published in 1905.

... Read more

Product Description

Most people know Greg Graffin as the lead singer of the punk band Bad Religion, but few know that he also received a PhD from Cornell University and teaches evolution at the University of California at Los Angeles. In Anarchy Evolution, Graffin argues that art and science have a deep connection. As an adolescent growing up when "drugs, sex, and trouble could be had on any given night," Graffin discovered that the study of evolution provided a framework through which he could make sense of the world.

Customer Reviews (15)

Insightful, Inspirational, Captivating
First off let me say, I have been a Greg Graffin/Bad Religion fan since I was in Kindergarten. Brought up and have lived in the punk scene for as long as I can remember. The problem with the punk seen in general is that the lifestyle is full a self destructive nature that is very hard to escape from. Inspired by the depth of the lyrics if Bad Religion, I began studying the band only to find out that they were not your typical punk band, Dr. Griffin was an educated man that could balance the life of a punk rocker as well as the life of a professional. This made me realize, what is the ultimate defiance of a punk rocker? It is success. I achieved my Masters Degree and continue loving the roots of my inspiration.

I loved the book because it gave me great insight into the man that has inspired me throughout my life. Seeing the struggles that he went though, the items that inspired him, seeing the human aspect of a person that I would consider one of my greatest influences in life. The greatest gift humanity has is the ability to question everything and find truth through observation, experience, and the anarchy life presents us with. This book is this journey, definitely worth reading.

The naturalistic worldview of a punk rock professor
Great, easy to read book is an evolutionary primer as well as a memoir of a punk rock legend. For fans of Bad Religion (obviously) and those interested in evolution and atheism.

I recently had the privilege of interviewing Greg for ChuckPalahniuk.net. We spoke about everything from music to the new book to evolution to the existence of god. He gives a great interview.

[...]

Great book
Having been a Bad Religion fan for about 16 years, Greg Graffin draws great parallels to his career as a scientist and a musician. He shows that it doesn't have to be all spikes, combat boots and leather to help change and influence the world we live in a positive manner. Thinking for yourself and asking tough questions. Truly anti-authoritarian.

Evolution for Punk Philosophers
What made this book such an interesting read is that Greg Graffin was able to intertwine a lesson on evolution with the story of his life. The main appeal to punk rock to me has been the angry response to authority. I have also enjoyed the spontaneous order and surprising politeness (with the exception of one concert) that would emerge from mosh pits at Bad Religion concerts. Punk rock spoke to the side of me that rabidly pursues truth. Greg also seems to have this same view about science and punk rock, which was exactly what I was hoping for from this book. Although he does not go into his personal politics in any part of the book, he does explain the beauty behind the anarchy of evolution. The natural order in evolution that arises out of seeming chaos, free of rules and only regulated by reality speaks deeply to a philosopher like me.

Open the blinds, to our complicated lives, we all need some kind of creed to lead us to light!
Anarchy Evolution is an honest, inspiring, and well organized book. Before I review the book, I'd like to explain why and how I became a fan of Bad Religion and Greg Graffin. I have been a Bad Religion fan since I was 12 (I am 24 now) and feel as if I have grown as a person through their music. I remember listening to some of their songs as a freshman in college and having to look up some of the words in the dictionary as a result of my limited vocabulary. Now I am a graduate student in Linguistics and not only do I understand their lexicon now; but their songs have a new meaning for me.

I will be honest and say that my background in evolution and science was limited prior to reading this book. I understood the basic concept of evolution and accepted it; however, I did not have enough knowledge of it to think critically about aspects of it, or apply to other concepts.

Anarchy Evolution uses the backdrop of Bad Religion, music, and anecdotes of Graffin's childhood to explain evolution and the naturalist worldview. Graffin uses personal stories and events to explain how evolution is relevant and meaningful to people's lives. Further, he offers his own philosophy on how to live a meaningful life as a naturalist. I would recommend this book to Bad Religion fans, people interested in evolution, and punk fans in general :).

Good job, Greg! ... Read more

Product Description
Why evolution is more than just a theory: it is a fact

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 splitting into two and are finding more and more fossils capturing change in the past—dinosaurs that have sprouted feathers, fish that have grown limbs.

Why Evolution Is True weaves together the many threads of modern work in genetics, paleontology, geology, molecular biology, and anatomy that demonstrate the “indelible stamp” of the processes first proposed by Darwin. In crisp, lucid prose accessible to a wide audience, Why Evolution Is True dispels common misunderstandings and fears about evolution and clearly confirms that this amazing process of change has been firmly established as a scientific truth. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (133)

A Good Defense of Intelligent Design
It is frankly astounding that this is supposed to be a defense of the THEORY of evolution.The good professor uses descriptions of defense mechanisms in insects as the "engine of evolution" and pretends that somehow, if an insect (such as a bee) does not presently have a defense, it will evolve this capacity before it is destroyed by a predator.And yet, we are supposed to believe that traits evolve through the genetic code over many generations and gradually. The author can't even resist the temptation to use the word "designed" (page 122) to describe the incredibly complex and sophisticated mechanisms and behaviors that a simple hornet possesses.

Another great example he gives is the Katydid that looks like a leaf - including "leaf like patterns and even 'rotten spots' resembling the holes in leaves" (page 124).He attributes this (page 128) to "random mutations".How do you suppose "random mutations" could ever - in a billion, billion years - produce such a remarkable resemblance to a leaf - or insects that look exactly like a stick?This is indeed a leap of faith beyond all comprehension.Even if this could be achieved through "random mutations", how did this species survive for all the generations needed to produce this camouflaging?You would have to believe that nothing wanted to eat it before it had the camouflage and then, in spite of this, it developed the camouflage to fool a predator that "genetics" or "random mutation" anticipated before the predator had ever attacked.Personally, I think it was just designed with camouflage by a Creator with a truly ingenious and artistic mind.

The following excerpt is taken from Wikipedia to show how highly speculative evolutionary "science" is:
Evolution is regarded as a branching process, whereby populations are altered over time and may speciate into separate branches, hybridize together, or terminate by extinction. This may be visualized in a phylogenetic tree.The problem posed by phylogenetics is that genetic data are only available for living taxa, and the fossil records (osteometric data) contains less data and more-ambiguous morphological characters. A phylogenetic tree represents a hypothesis of the order in which evolutionary events are assumed to have occurred.

Note the use of the words "ambiguous", "hypothesis", and "assumed" above.

I assume a hypothesis that the "science" of evolution is an unambiguous attempt to do away with God.It is a creative and fanciful attempt, but I would not bank on it when the Lord of Glory comes to judge the quick and the dead.

Good information, often presented with unwarranted arrogance.
As one who believes that G-d created the universe billions of years ago and maintains His involvement with His creation, I read this book with genuine curiosity and wanting to learn.

A weak point of Coyne's presentation is his dismissive tone when speaking of those who find intelligent design credible and might, perhaps, find some of Coyne's arguments less than persuasive. He can be so obnoxiously condescending that it would seem to undermines his repeated claims to be holding the upper hand as the more "objective" observer.

The Amazon book review section is not the place to debate evolution vs Creation and there are people far more capable than myself in engaging in that debate.

However, as an ordinary reviewer of this book,I would say that while I learned a great deal, I remained unconvinced by his insistence that complex inter-dependencies in nature could have arisen entirely without divine assistance.

And I found his smug self-assurance unwarranted and entirely unnecessary.

Design Free
It would be nice to read an edition of this book that did not refer to the debate about intelligent design or creationism.
As one who understands the principles of evolution, these references are a distraction to an appreciation that our ancestors have survived a 3.5 billion year trip to today.
Incredible.I am blessed.

Proof Beyond all Doubt that Evolution is True
I almost didn't read this book, for I thought the case for evolution simply couldn't be made any better.I was wrong.Jerry Coyne's forays into the various scientific field which demonstrates evolution's truth is as impressive as anything else I have read on the subject, including Richard Dawkin's books on the subject.From the fossil record, to anatomical comparisons, to embryology, and the various "freaks" and evidence of bed design in nature, Coyne's developments of the facts and arguments for evolution could not help to persuade any but the most most dogmatic creationist.

What is especially convincing is the way Coyne shows, over and over again, how intermediate, "missing-link" fossils consistently appear in the geological record exactly where we would expect to fin them, based on other evidence or arguments.He is also clear in showing that evolution, even "macro" evolution can and does show up in modern experiments and observations.

All in all, a must read for anyone interested in this subject (and if you aren't interested, you should be).

Seven Stars Book
I want to make my review brief and straightforward though there is a lot to say.

The author presents an overwhelming case for the "Fact of Evolution". It is hard to believe that somebody, after reading the book, will still not believe in evolution.

The book is very entertaining, very informative and very objective.

I have few suggestions for the author:

1. I would include the notes as footnotes instead of placing them at the end.

2. What about the evidence of chromosome fusion (chromosome 2)? It would be interesting to add this to the genetic evidence of evolution.

3. I want to draw the author's attention to a phenomenon in humans similar to the drug-resistance in bacteria. There is evidence that the overexpression of P-glycoprotein causes resistance to chemotherapy and antiepileptic drugs. I encourage the author to read about it and consider including it in the book. It is very interesting and it is a microevolution in human that we can see in front of our eyes.

Thank you very much the wonderful book.
... Read more

Product Description
In this sweeping, dazzling journey through history, Robert Wright unveils a discovery of crucial importance to the present moment: there is a pattern in the evolution Judaism, Christianity, and Islam, and a "hidden code" in their scriptures. Through the prisms of archeology, theology, anthropology, and evolutionary psychology, Wright repeatedly overturns conventional wisdom to show how and why religion can strengthen the social order-even in an age of globalization-and explains why modern science is not only compatible with religion, but actively affirms the validity of the religious quest.

Vast in scope and thrilling in ambition, The Evolution of God brilliantly alters our understanding of God and where He came from-and where He and we are going next. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (99)

Biblically Illiterate and Wildly speculative
What an amazing example of successful pandering to an audience.Wright contrives a work of wild speculation which seems to know no bounds.His frequent references to the Bible are wonderfully wrong or parsed to such a degree as to make Bill Clinton envious.His whole premise is that as society grew more complex so did religion forcing a transition from polytheism (a zero sum game process) to monotheism (a non-zero sum game).What Wright never bothers to address is the story in Genesis of the call of Abram.He dismisses the Bible in most cases but at the very least should refer to the story even if it is only to marginalize it.Instead, though Abraham is mentioned several times the story of his call hangs accusingly unresolved.The unfaithful will love Wright's brash condescention and subtle jabs at belief but they should not dig below the surface, a very thin surface, else Wright's book collapses in muddled confusion.

The Evolution of God
Robert Wright takes on a sizable task as he tris to trace the concept of "God" over the course of human history.From primitive tribes to today's complex societies, humans have viewed God in one way or another.Wright's research covered many different cultures, but some of his early chapters only explore one particular society's view of God.This is too bad because he clearly has a strong sense of how to research and present his findings in a readable text.

Once he has basic tribal cultures explained, he moves on to the "God" of the major religions, demonstrating how cultures have gone from polytheistic to monotheistic beliefs.Evn our Judeo-Christian Bible has references to gods other than the Lord.This, I take, means our society is no further developed than some Pacific Island culture.When a god is elevated toa higher position than his contemporaries it really only means more people have accepted this as their primary (or true) God than other deities.

Wrights style crosses from engaging to complex.He makes the reader work to obtain the message within his text.But then religion is not a simple subject governed by black and white rules.The thought that God may have rivals and may not be the only god is difficult for some, but simple for others.When bad things happen to people it is tempting to question why a loving God would allow such an event to happen.Wright uses the case of pacific Northwest native tribes and earthquakes to illustrate his point.To some of these native tribes, their land rests atop the back of a large dog.Every son often the dog gets up and shakes thereby causing an earthquake.God (the dog in this case) is not punishing evildoers in this society, dogs naturally shake from time to time and that's what happens when your island rests on a dog's back.

So many people want to blame others for God's fury.Given the headlines from just about any given day, there is enough to irritate God ten times over.In this respect there should be a devastating earthquake once a week.Wright's book helps us realize that God is God because the concept of God has evolved over time.The human experience seems to want a God to believe in (and blame our troubles on) but as human society changes, our concept of God naturally will change as well.

Hats off
I read this novel with great interest and can highly recommend it to everybody going to universiy.

Difficult to read and Self-serving
This book is so difficult to read it makes my eyes hurt. I came away from this book with the feeling of my inadquitness and stupidity because I believe in God. I'm going to have to find another book, possibly by Karen Armstrong, to fix the damage this man has done to my personal beliefs. I feel sorry for him that he feels the way he does. Then he goes as far as to thank God, at the end of the book, for his family for putting up with him . What the heck game is this guy playing? Oh and what is all this "non-zero-sumness" he's always referring to? Many times this guy totally lost me in his train of thought. Read something other then this, PLEASE!

an excellent book ... yet another one based on HISTORY, not religious folklore
Wright summarizes, rather than breaks new ground . . . he is, after all, primarily a journalist and not a writer who has been formally trained as an historian. Nevertheless, he accurately sets forth a compilation of the results of genuine historical inquiries, and is valuable for that function.His approach is critical, and is a summary of historical research ON religion and is not a work OF religion.That is, it is a summary of historical analysis and not of religious proselytizing (of one creed or another) camouflaged as historical analysis.

He is especially good in his discussion of the Hebrew Scriptures (called "the Old Testament" by Christians).He correctly points out that the Hebrew Scriptures are political, ideological writings, that they misrepresent history and misrepresent the origins and timing of "the coming of monotheism," i.e, that they are simply unreliable as historically accurate documents.

It is certainly worth buying and reading.

And I thank you. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (53)

Brilliant Character: Calpurnia Tate
I'm beginning to notice that I love books with loveable characters. Calpurnia Tate is adventurous, inquisitive, loving, and intelligent...an absolute joy to meet in the pages of these books. Even if you're not particularly interested in science, the curiosity of Ms. Tate draws you in to her fascinating world. And the historical setting of Texas at the turn of the century folds you into its warm embrace, wrapping you up in the story even further. Calpurnia Tate will win your heart and your mind.

Aspirations vs. Expectations in Turn-of-the-Century Texas
n 1899, Calpurnia Virginia Tate, "Callie Vee" to her family, is sandwiched between three older brothers and three younger, the despair of her mother who wishes her to grow up ladylike, and, like her brothers, is in fear of her grandfather, who lives with them, but who has abandoned the family business to hole up in an old shed, his "laboratory." Then one day, to satisfy curiosity, Calpurnia braves her grandfather's expected wrath.

What a surprise then that the old man opens a new world of nature to Calpurnia and the two of them form a close bond. In the meantime, she lives through the day-to-day routine of a Victorian child: piano lessons, problems with her brothers, worries about losing the love of her beloved older brother, and, worst of all, lessons in "domestic science" from her mother and the family cook, who expect her to fit the rigid women's mold of the time.

This is a wonderful book: Calpurnia's narration is bright and sparkling, her brothers torment her but love her, the slice-of-life sequences remind one of PENROD or CADDIE WOODLAWN, frequently with a bit of humor. The descriptions of the weather, the countryside, the town, Grandfather's "laboratory," etc. are vivid, bringing the era and setting to life. I was also impressed that the author did not make the mistake of so many modern books, that the "good" white people are somehow enlightened to the plight of minorities and treat them well where others (the "bad" people) do not. Sadly, this was the subtle prejudice that was so hard to overcome in those days, that minorities were only fit for manual work and that "they want to be that way." It is a great irony that while Calpurnia and her grandfather are learning so much about the natural world, they have not yet learned the most basic of lessons, that skin color is not a barrier to intelligence or ambition. Other little ironies abound, like the fact that Mrs. Tate deplores the use of "drink," yet in stressful times takes Lydia Pinkham's "vegetable compound," which is one-fifth alcohol.

Every once in a while, a word or phrase breaks the carefully crafted 19th century world for a second, but this is a minor problem only. Highly recommended.

great read!
Both my daughters and I enjoyed this book. Calpurnia is a strong young woman who is making her own way, seeking education when it's hard, and learning from her adversity (including a pack of brothers!)

For Girls of All Ages
I simply adored this novel. Calpurnia's plight is something that every girl, no matter her age, no matter the era in which she lives, will relate to. Calpurnia is a young girl who wants to be a scientist. The trouble is, she's a girl and girls can't be scientists, not in the year 1899. It reminded me of when I was kid and I used to play baseball with the neighborhood boys. I was good, really good. Despite the fact that I was easily better than most of the other boys, I was always picked last. Why? Because I was a girl. And girls can't possibly play baseball as well as boys. Every girl has a story like this, even if it's a more subtle form of discrimination, the kind that predominates in modern day society.

This is a character driven story and a good one. It takes place in the past and we, the readers, know as we begin this journey with Calpurnia as she discovers evolution (both scientifically and socially) that things aren't going to change for women anytime soon. Nevertheless, I identified with Calpurnia and hoped against all odds that she would break the mold, at least in her own life. The author skillfully developed her characters, especially the narrator, Calpurnia.

Calpurnia is lovingly drawn. I feel like I know her. I feel like I was her. Calpurnia is a headstrong girl who can't stand the things that are forcibly thrust upon her just because she's a girl, like big, frilly dresses in the insufferable Texas heat, laboring in the kitchen over pies and learning how to sew. Though the book spans the course of months, not years, we watch Calpurnia as she is introduced into the beginnings of adulthood, little by little. We see her complex relationships with those around her and how she doesn't understand her mother or why she's losing her beloved older brother and how she doesn't understand the socio-political implications of working in the cotton field. We see her growing up, a place we, too, have been. But the best part of the story is the relationship that begins and develops between Calpurnia and her oft-reclusive grandfather. The relationship is one of common interest - science - and it becomes so much more. It is simply a pleasure to watch this budding relationship grow.

This is a wonderful, heartwarming tale that chronicles a defining period in a young girl's life. It is a place all girls have been - a place where some of us lose our luster and others continue to shine bright despite the obstacles. I think this story is one that every girl will understand. 5 stars.

Spunky, thoughtful girl with opportunity and restrictions
Definitely worth its Newbery Honor award, this charming tale is title character Calpurnia's telling of her year at age 11 in 1899.Calpurnia is the only girl among seven siblings in a Texas home.The story largely focuses on Calpurnia's relationship with her grandfather who is retired, living with the family, a bit reclusive and eccentric, and a most avid student of nature and natural life.Calpurnia joins his scientific-focused world and becomes fascinated and enthusiastically involved.She also has to face the expectations of an adolescent girl at that time, tatting, cooking, learning piano, and other things she finds lower priority than the science.She also must deal with her brothers, parents, peers, and teachers.For a young reader, this is delightful for its story alone, but the scientific process and history of the times (a telephone comes to town and they get to actually see a newfangled automobile!) add greatly to the story's depth and value.There is more than one laugh out loud moment in here, side stories of romance, piano recitals, the possible discovery of a new species, and more to keep the reader smiling and enjoying it.With a bit of Richard Peck (of A Year Down Yonder and other terrific historical fiction) flavor, this joins Peck's historical fiction as a worthwhile pleasure for a young reader or an adult. ... Read more

Product Description
"Dr. Gundry has crafted a wise program with a powerful track record.”
–Mehmet Oz, M.D., professor and vice chair of surgery, NY Presbyterian/Columbia Medical Center

Does losing weight and staying healthy feel like a battle? Well, it’s really a war. Your enemies are your own genes, backed by millions of years of evolution, and the only way to win is to outsmart them. Dr. Steven Gundry’s revolutionary book shares the health secrets other doctors won’t tell you:

• Why plants are “good” for you because they’re “bad” for you, and meat is “bad” because it’s “good” for you
• Why plateauing on this diet is actually a sign that you’re on the right track
• Why artificial sweeteners have the same effects as sugar on your health and your waistline
• Why taking antacids, statins, and drugs for high blood pressure and arthritis masks health issues instead of addressing them

Along with the meal planner, 70 delicious recipes, and inspirational stories, Dr. Gundry’s easy-to-memorize tips will keep you healthy and on course. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (63)

Lost 15 lbs in 4 weeks!
It really provides a manageable and easy to remember recipe for losing weight quickly by tricking your body into thinking its winter (winter is now WIN).Its a little strange theoretically, honestly, but it works - so thats what matters!

COMMON SENSE that works and could easily save your life.
After extensive searching over years, and thanks to the recommendation by Tony Robbins, I've found the information that makes such sense to me and has enabled me to feel better than I've felt for at least 7 or 8 years! Now I'm registered for a 5 K (and it feels so GREAT to know I can now do this!) and the pounds are falling off .. and on top of that I'm saving so much food money even though I'm shopping at Whole Foods for organics.Sure, you have to get off your overweight behind and make salads (which can be really delicious) and actually prepare nutritious food (which can be really easy and fast) instead of calling for the pizza man.Well, it's all a matter of priorities and I've chosen with total conviction to LIVE... and I absolutely will not go back to preparing to die young.It feels so good to be healthy!Thank you Dr. Gundry!It's sure easier to ignore the sugar junk when I'm thriving! (and it has nothing to do with rather or not I hated my parents or how my day went)All of my days go better when nourishing food does wonders for my body/mind/Heart/Soul because my attitude is also so much healthier!Your guidelines really work!!!

Discussed
I can't very well review an item that has not yet arrived.It was due on 14 Sept.It is now 21 Sept, & still no Book to read or review.Your service deserves a big "F" for Failure.Please Credit my account and keep your Book, I'm tired of waiting.

Information most doctors don't seem to know but you should.
Dr. Gundry lays out his prescription for better health in an interesting and informative way.He spells out his theories in a straightforward way and provides both research data and empirical evidence from his own practice to back it up. If most Americans would start following his recommendations, I believe our nation's obesity problem would disappear and health care costs would plummet. Dr. Gundry's book and website provide all the information you need to improve your health.Don't waste your money on fad diets. Dr. Gundry's plan works, it's painless, and it won't cost you an extra dime beyond the price of his book.

DR GUNDRY'S DIET EVOLUTION
I STARTED READING IT AND IT REALLY MADE SENSE.I HAVE FRIENDS THAT WERE VERY SUCCESSFUL ON IT.I AM STARTING IT TODAY.THE ONLY SET BACK IS EVERYTHING YOU EAT IS TOP QUALITY SO ITS A LITTLE PRICEY. I.E. FREE RUNNING EGGS WITH NO BACTERIA.HE TELLS YOU WHAT SUPPLEMENTS YOU NEED AND YOU NEVER HAVE TO BE HUNGRY.IT HAS ALSO PROVED TO LOVER OR ELIMINATE HIGH CHOLESTEROL, HIGH BLOOD PRESSURE AND HAS A VEGAN PLAN AS WELL.I WILL LET YOU KNOW MORE AFTER A FEW WEEKS.. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (37)

great!
i ordered this for my boyfrind because he's a halo fanatic! & h loves it!

Everything and more that you'd expect from the AWESOME world of Halo!
Great filler for those hardcore Halo fans such as myself.And for the first time we have a story involving the Brutes and seeing more into the ways of their clan structure.Every story had me begging for more as this fills several voids in several areas of the Halo time-line.A MUST HAVE FOR ANY TRUE HALO FAN!!YOU WILL RE-READ IT, I PROMISE!!

Short Stories
I'll keep it short and sweet since there are many more articulate and informative reviews.

About half of the short stories are a little lackluster and provide more of an insight and observation into the mindset into the other occupants of the Halo universe, such as the Brutes, Drones, Spartans and soldiers.

However, the few "bigger" stories with a couple returning veteran writers to the universe (Dirt, Tobias S. Buckell; The Mona Lisa, Jeff VanderMeer & Tessa Kum; Palace Hotel, Robt McLees; Human Weakness, Karen Traviss; The Impossible Life and the Possible Death of Preston J. Cole, Eric Nylund) will really capture your attention.

If you enjoy short stories as well as different perspectives and better focus on details, then you will probably enjoy this book.

Average at Best
This is a collection of short stories on the Halo science fiction universe.Had previously read and enjoyed previous Halo novels.This book however, is disappointing and average at best.

The first story is very weak, Pariah, as it is about a 6 year old boy who attempts to commit murder, but is recruited as an orphan to the Spartan program.It is very disturbing that the author would try to have a 6 year old trying to think of ways to kill his sleeping father.Also disturbing is how the author has the character with no mental problems that would rise up.Poorly written and has no realism in human psychology.

Heels of a Fuss is told from two points of view, one of the Covenant Brutes, the second from the humans.Was engaging to a point, but the ending was annoying.If the religious leader wanted to remain hidden and presumed dead, he would run off in a different direction and not stayed with the main character.

Mona Lisa story was like the Deadspace video game with the characters having to stomp to death Flood infected human dead on a derelict human ship.Characters are rather one dimensional, predictable, and nothing special to care about.Once Covenant and infected are found, the mission to enforce the Cole Protocol is issued.A mere ODST squad has to find their way to the bridge.Oh wait, squad members go missing, duh, if you are checking a space vessel with unknown number of hostiles, one would keep squad integrity and also keep better protection around their only means of escape, the Pelican shuttle.But no, they stupidly leave the pilot alone and divide their squad into two.Plus, when the pilot is captured, they don't even try to rescue her.Gee, if she died, how would they escape, duh.What is even more insulting is that they could have simply evacuated and fired missiles into the Mona Lisa that would have ensured the Cole Protocol.The actions that the author depicts have no logic and what little strategy is insulting to military training.

The only redeeming story in this book is The Impossible Life and Possible Death of Preston J. Cole.It was very interesting in learning the exploits and career of this famous Halo character.

The other stories are average at best.The black and white ink artwork is not clear nor interesting.There is better fan art to be found on the internet, which is perplexing as to why the particular style was chosen.

Overall, am very disappointed in having bought this book.Feel like the publisher just wanted to make a quick dollar selling to fanboys who don't care about quality, but will mindlessly buy. Can't recommend buying the book, am not spineless of under the mind control of the Flood or Microsoft.This book is for die hard fans only, for the rest of us, avoid.

Yet another Great Halo Book!

Eric Nylund Remains My Favorite Author For The Halo Series, but All the stories in this book were very well written.Goood Read! ... Read more

Product Description
Richard Dawkins transformed our view of God in his blockbuster, The God Delusion, which sold more than 2 million copies in English alone. He revolutionized the way we see natural selection in the seminal bestseller The Selfish Gene. Now, he launches a fierce counterattack against proponents of "Intelligent Design" in his latest New York Times bestseller, The Greatest Show on Earth. "Intelligent Design" is being taught in our schools; educators are being asked to "teach the controversy" behind evolutionary theory. There is no controversy. Dawkins sifts through rich layers of scientific evidence—from living examples of natural selection to clues in the fossil record; from natural clocks that mark the vast epochs wherein evolution ran its course to the intricacies of developing embryos; from plate tectonics to molecular genetics—to make the airtight case that "we find ourselves perched on one tiny twig in the midst of a blossoming and flourishing tree of life and it is no accident, but the direct consequence of evolution by non-random selection." His unjaded passion for the natural world turns what might have been a negative argument, exposing the absurdities of the creationist position, into a positive offering to the reader: nothing less than a master’s vision of life, in all its splendor. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (247)

Thoroughly Enjoyable and Educational Book on Evolution
I have been an atheist since I was 19, and came to read this book already convinced of the fact of evolution.My primary motivation for reading the book was to catch up on the current evidence supporting evolution, which makes constant advancements.When in conversation, I also want to be able to specifically articulate to others why I believe as I do, and not give them unsatisfactory boilerplate answers.The book helped me achieve both of these goals, and did so in an entertaining way that caused me to read the book almost as quickly as a good fiction novel. I liked the way Dawkins provides evidence for evolution from a large variety of different perspectives, including molecular biology, comparisons between existing species, fossil evidence, embryology, and even plate tectonics.Dawkins also explains experiments in which evolution actually takes place before our eyes.I was especially impressed by the experiments involving several separate generations of bacteria in which one of the lines evolved to digest and use a non-glucose chemical as fuel.As a by-product of reading this book, you will also gain much knowledge on the biology and anatomy of animals, including ourselves.Dawkins demonstrates the beauty of the evolutionary point of view, which in my view is far more practical, real, and elegant than the creationist faith.

Finally, I have the utmost respect for Dawkins as a scientist and a writer.He has fought for the cause of science, and done so in an admirable way; not with the puffery of a political pundit, but with the objective reasoning that is heart of all science.I've seen him promoting this book in interviews with people all the way from Bill Mahar to Bill O'Reilly; in all of them, he has held his own and done a great job of spreading the light of science.

I am better for having read this book.

I expected nothing less than I great book from Dawkins & I got that
If you have read Dawkins' earlier books and found answers about the meaning of life, then this book is just the cherry on top. It will update and enforce what he has started in "The Selfish Gene." I certainly recommend this book. But mostly I want readers to see it as continuation of what Dawkins likes to refer to as 'awareness raising' of the role of evolution in our lives.

Good book for a layman curious in science, but too sophisticated for creationists.
I never thought that evolution would ever defense. Even in Utah (of all places), evolution was taught in my high school, and I don't remember anyone in the class raised an objection. The evidences presented in class back then seemed sufficient. When I picked up this book at Hongkong airport, I was more curious about additional information that can presented about evolution, since I didn't study biology beyond AP biology in High School, which is because I don't want to go into any field similar to my dad, who has a Ph.D. in some subfield of biology.

As a book on popular science to the layman, this certainly achieves that. I was always curious about what they mean when they say chimps and humans have 98% of DNA in common, and how the radioactive dating worked. The information are presented so well that I couldn't put the book down.

A good portion of the book seems to be an effort to convert the creationists. A book as such is much needed since so many political leaders in US are so scientifically illiterate. However, I think the book fails on that effort. For someone so stupid to be a creationist, they can't possibly possession the mental capacity to follow the dense chapters on embryology or molecular genetics. What they need is to have ideas reduced into sounds bites, one liners, and colorful pamphlets. Someone please write such a book.

The debate is over
For anyone who doesn't fully understand evolution or who is on the fence about the matter, this is a must read.It's not for the faint of mind either.Dawkins doesn't spare anytime with good old light hearted debate, he discharges pure scientific data and empirical research to make the point clear and un-debatable.

Richard not only uses the traditional forms of fossil records to validate evolutions case, but more importantly he delves deeper into an array of scientific disciplines that together authenticate evolution as fact.It's time we open our understanding and come to grips with the truth.

A book to be read by everyone
Dawkins has a great writing style and his arguments are crystal clear.
A good example of clear thinking by making hypothesis a then giving proofs for them.
But most of all, it shows his passion for the scientific method, which I think is the may lesson of the book: don't believe, be skeptic, that's what science is. ... Read more

Product Description

Customer Reviews (35)

Wishful writings
I have read few chapters of the book and decided that I'm not going to buy it. The book spreads a good and optimistic message but has absolutely no base in any kind of science or reality as we know it. The curve of belief systems is a joke, e.g. what would a Muslim think of it? What would a Catholic think? A Buddhist? I'm not giving my money for YET ANOTHER story about the fractional reserve banking and spiritual healing. Wishful writings are not bound to be true. Unfortunately, not-too-educated people will cherish this book.

Good book, but not great
This book was not quite what I expected.I was expecting something a bit more ontologically shocking and paradigm-busting. Nonetheless it was a good read. There is much here that I already knew, and I am happy to see citation of several books that I have read.I did learn a some interesting facts along the way.I learned a few things about Lamarck and Darwin that I was not aware of, and I learned a few facts about cellular biology and even American history. But I was hoping for so much more from this book than just learning facts. I was hoping to discover a whole new way of looking at the world. In that regard there is nothing here I haven't come across before.
These authors seem to delight in creating analogies as a means of explanation or clarification, and in my opinion they are quite clever in this regard, but now and then they stretch their analogies a bit thin, but perhaps I am being nitpicky. They also are sometimes very clever in creating puns, and their plays on words elicited a chuckle out of me more than a few times, though I found many of their puns rather lame.

For the most part I found their information to be accurate, but sometimes they really missed the mark. For instance, they give an incorrect description of the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. A common misinterpretation of this important principle is to see it as the observer affecting the properties of a particle or system by the inevitability of disruption caused by observation, i.e. when you observe a particle's momentum, you disturb its position and vice versa. The Heisenberg uncertainty principle is more subtle than that. Simply stated, it says that a particle cannot possess precise amounts of two conjugate properties, momentum and position being one example of two conjugate properties. It is not a matter of the observer disturbing one conjugate property by measuring the other. A particle cannot even possess a precise amount of one conjugate property if it has a precise amount of the other. Though it is the observer who by their act of measurement gives the particle a precise amount of one or the other conjugate property, it is not the direct act of observation that disturbs the other conjugate property, it is because the particle cannot evenpossess a precise amount of a property if you give it a precise amount of its conjugate property. The difference is subtle but very important to quantum theory.
Also they give the wrong reason for Einstein's famous statement, "God does not play dice with the universe." They claim the Einstein made that statement as a reaction against the Heisenberg uncertainty principle. When Einstein made this statement to Neils Bohr he was reacting against the inherent randomness of particles as described by quantum theory. In classical physics if you know every parameter of every particle in an experiment, you can predict the outcome. However in quantum theory, you can only predict probabilities of different outcomes. For instance if you have a collection of radioactive particles, you have no way of predicting which one will decay at any time, but you can accurately predict that after a given amount of time half of them will have decayed. This seemingly random, indeterminate nature of quantum physics is what prompted Einstein to make that famous statement, not Heisenberg's uncertainty principle.
They bandy about the term "survival of the fittest" throughout this book, mostly because they are attempting to discredit it as being the major guiding force in evolution, and even to dismiss it as a tautology. The problem is they seem to have a rather restricted interpretation of this phrase. The "fittest" simply means those who are the most adapted to the local environment. The phrase "survival of the fittest" was coined by Herbert Spencer after Darwin's theory of natural selection became known. It is now generally acknowledged that there are other driving forces behind evolution, but Darwin's natural selection is still seen by the scientific world as the main force behind it. They rightly dismiss social Darwinism (Darwin himself was very uncomfortable and skeptical of it).
I have considered for most of my life that there is some sort of intelligence behind evolution, some sort of Divine consciousness guiding it.The authors' concept of some sort of conscious energy field guiding evolution intrigues me. But I wonder, if God or some creative conscious force has always been guiding evolution on Earth, why did it take so long for humans to come along? Maybe we are not as important as we'd like to think.
I was delighted read about John Cairn's research on bacteria, which was published in the British journal Nature in 1988. I remember reading about the results of his experiments back then and I've been puzzled as to why I've never seen anything in print about it since that time. Cairn's research has profound implications for evolution. The authors explain and interpret Cairn's research succinctly and intelligently.
Would I recommend this book? I would say yes, it is a good book and worth reading. Depending on people's backgrounds, each reader will derive something different from this book, but the main theme will be obvious. We must make a sudden leap in our cultural evolution and embrace an entirely new paradigm of reality which acknowledges the oneness of all things or we will likely die out as a species.

A Must Read Book!
This is a must read book for anyone who is interested in the future of our planet. It provides a comprehensive and very clear explanation at how we have gotten to where we are today and what needs to be done to ensure our continued viability as a species.I highly recommend this book!It is the best book that I have read on this subject.

Harmonizing the head with the heart
I didn't find this the most readable of books initially, as I couldn't tell where it was going. But when I really got into it, I began to appreciate it. The subject-matter of the book affects all our personal lives - the very existence of the planet, and in fact has broad metaphysical ramifications. I haven't previously read any book quite like it.

The authors examine various myths entrenched in the basic beliefs of our civilization and challenge 1) the main tenets of Newtonian philosophy, basically that the only reality is physical matter 2) Charles Darwin's theory of evolution and the necessity for us to fight for our survival - survival of the fittest 3) the theory that we have all blindly accepted for years that we are controlled and limited by our genes and 4) that evolution and everything else that happens to us is random. Actually all these four premises have been proved by modern science to be fallacious, but our society is still acting on them as though they were true.

It is explained that evolution did not occur gradually but in great leaps. Single cells developed into single cell communities. These developed into multicellular organisms, which in turn developed into societal organizations.

That is, we did not evolve through competition and fighting but through cooperation and banding (bonding) together.

The crazy self-destructive way our human society is run is compared to the way the cells in our body run the show. Our cells don't fight and kill each other but pool their resources and work together for the health of the greater whole.

It's all explained at a very high level, and I would need to have read the book a couple of times more to even begin to give an adequate representation of the details or even all the main precepts of the book.

But what I got out of it was that at this critical juncture when both our living planet and ourselves are on the brink of a new evolutionary leap, we need to change our basic thinking, cooperate instead of fight, love instead of hate. In other words we need to follow the example of our own cells, and realize that we humans are also all part of one body, Gaia - and if we are to survive we must accept all other beings as necessary parts of ourselves, or our greater Self.

The key factor to the success of this evolutionary leap is LOVE.

And when I read this book I felt the love and the high consciousness energy of the authors flowing from the pages, and I myself was helped in achieving a higher vibration. It is a book that contributes to harmonizing the head with the heart, which will be a necessary pre-condition for the survival of our civilization.

I strongly recommend this book to every thinking and loving person, and to all those who aspire to be such.

Spontaneous Evolution - Bruce Lipton
I am only 2/3 of the way thru this amazing book, but it is one of the most brilliant and mind-shaking, paradigm-shifting books I have ever read. Bruce takes all the insights from people like Eckhardt Tolle, Gregg Braden; Wayne Dyer; Carolyn Myss... and so many others, and synthesizes those insights into a ground-breaking & revolutionary new way of looking at the human condition - where we have come from; where we are going, and that there is still hope for this embattled world of ours. But we urgently need to make new choices based on the latest concepts science has to offer, rather than continue living our lives from the old and limited Newtonian paradigm, which should already long have been superceded. This is a pivotal book for the very survival of the human species; an absolute must-read for every human on this planet! ... Read more

Product Description
“Original and awe-inspiring . . . an exhilarating tour of some of the most profound and important ideas in biology.”—New Scientist 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 ... Read more

Customer Reviews (32)

Best Science book of 2009
If any other recommendation is necessary, the Royal Society has just announced (October 21) that "Life Ascending" has won their award for the best science book of 2009.

A well deserved award.

It's ironic that this book was published the same year as Stephen Meyer's "Signature in the Cell" which was overhyped by its supporters (who also complained that it was difficult to understand ...)

Life Ascending
"Life Ascending" by Dr. Nick Lane isa fascinating adventure. I would not recommend it to you as your first book on evolution and probably not as your second or third. However, if you have read enough to somewhat appreciate the role of DNA and genes in evolutionary science, then you will find this book very worth reading. The author is a biochemist and he looks at evolution through a biochemist's eyes. He stops short of introducing structural formulas of organic compounds and focuses more on describing in words, the effects of these chemicals on life processes. In other words, he writes in a popular prose to keep a wider audience interested. Being a chemist myself, but never having taken biochemistry in college, I would have liked to have seen what some of those molecules looked like.

Dr. Lane can reach farther back in time than any author who I have ever read. All living things have a common origin if you go back far enough in time. I never imagined that common traits go so far back as this author has identified. Multi-celled life may have evolved less than one billion years ago. Yet, our origins go back much farther than that. The first chapter entitled,"The Origin of Life" takes you back to the very beginning of life on this planet. He discusses the theories, which have come and gone. He identifies their strengths and weaknesses. Finally, he introduces the theory which he believes is most likely to be true. He delivers a convincing argument for it. The remaining chapters examine: DNA, Photosynthesis, The Complex Cell, Sex, Movement, Sight, Hot Blood, Consciousness, and Death. Each chapter examines the history of research on these topics, evaluates the prevailing theories and finally presents the reader with his favorite and sometimes personal explanation for how evolution worked its magic.

I enjoyed this book immensely! I had previously done a lot of reading on evolutionary topics and wondered if I would be rehashing the same old concepts. I didn't need to worry about that with Dr. Lane. He took me to places I had never been before and made the trip very stimulating.

Ralph D. Hermansen, September 30, 2010

Excellent reading. Chapter 10 is great food for thought
Beside being a great summary of the key breakthroughs of evolution, chapter 10 (death) goes beyond and really made me thing about how short is our pass in this universe and how that is somehow preprogrammed.

It seems that we (all living organisms) live in a very precarious equilibrium between our cells dying in a preprogrammed way (exception when our cells die for other reasons, like disease or accidents) or the same cells going nuts and start reproducing in an uncontrolled manner (thus developing cancer).

If we tweak the knobs of the preprogrammed cell death, we could generate some problems with rebel cells starting to develop cancer (remember Blade Runner?, when borgs could break free from the preprogrammed death, they started creating problems)

I also wrote about this topic in my blog.

[...]

Overall, this is one of the best science books of 2009. Great material for Darwin's bicentennial

Brilliant
What an absolutely brilliant book. The author skillfully guides the reader through a series of complex yet wonderful steps along the amazing journey of life on our planet, while illustrating beautifully the fundamental scientific process that, in its own never-ending series of steps, continually seeks to illustrate and explain the natural universe we inhabit.

Fascinating yet frustrating
At times the book makes its points clearly and it is fascinating. but so much of the time it is unfocused, not content with describing natures greatest inventions, the author insists on giving equal weight to the history of thought surrounding each invention.
When he is focused, he can be witty and compelling, but you turn around for a moment, and he has put down his rifle and is wielding a blunderbus.
There is so much that is interesting and compelling in the book, but then for long periods he throws in so many half-explained terms that it is like listening to an orchestra in which every instrument is being played at exactly the same volume.
For example, photosynthesis; he explains some things beautifully, such as the extraordinary stability of water molecules and therefore the inherent difficulty in separating oxygen from hydrogen. And he is entertaining as he employs the metaphor of a street hustler, who manages to sell an additional electron to the carbon dioxide molecule that is perfectly happy without it. But then, having convinced me so thoroughly of the difficulties involved, he seemed to rush over the exact details of how photosynthesis overcomes them. ... Read more

Product Description
David Buss updates his classic study of the origin of human mating behavior with fascinating new research.

If we all want love, why is there so much conflict in our most cherished relationships? To answer this question, says noted psychologist David Buss, we must look into our evolutionary past. Based on the most massive study of human mating ever undertaken, encompassing more than ten thousand people of all ages from thirty-seven cultures worldwide, The Evolution of Desire is the first book to present a unified theory of human mating behavior.

Now in a revised and updated edition, Buss's classic presents the latest research in the field, including startling new discoveries about the evolutionary advantages of infidelity, orgasm, and physical attractiveness. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (50)

From a Practical Perspective
I used this book and Buss' Evolutionary Psychology text book a few years back for a term paper in college. At the time I was in a troubled relationship and it opened me up in understanding people's behavior. It clued me in on how the mind works and why men and women seek certain partners. It's not personal, but about survival. Whether this book is scientific factual or proven is no concern to me. Every choice can be traced to our survival instinct. I've recommended this to friends and colleagues over the years to help them understand people and in that sense I recommend it.

Bad kindle version!
Might be a great book, but the Kindle version is scanned poorly that it is distracting. Words are misspelled, the font looks horrible.

Fast Delivery
This bood was in great condition. I received it the same week I reder it!! wish was great since school started that same week.!!

I liked this book
This book is similar to many evolution theory type books for example"Survival of the sickest". The main theme of all these books is that we behave in a certain way because our ancestors behaved that way in order to survive.

There's some interesting observations such as 1) Women prefer tall men because back in the "Cave man days" a short or small guy wouldn't be able to protect the female from all the physical threats. 2) Men pefer women with "hourglass" figures. (Apparently they're more fertile and healthy) Same applies for symmetrical features.

Also what's interesting, is how many married women's children are not their husband's. This statistic apparently was first discovered when the blood types of married couples vs their children were compared. I'm not a doctor, but if you were A or B then your kid could only be A or B (or something like that).Apparently this was a prehistoric survival technique. Or to put in modern terms, the woman would marry the rich old guy and have a kid with the young healthy boyfriend.

Or as Benny Hill said to his wife in bed one night.
"Goodnite mother of 6"
To which she replied...
"Goodnite father of 4"

A book worth reading but it had more pages than necessary
I bought this book after attending a great speech given by the author.I have always been interested in understanding differences between men and women in terms of dating and relationships.The author provided insights from the evolutionary psychological point of views.I particularly enjoyed to read sections containing related examples observed in animals and results from various studies.It was my first time to read such a book.It was refreshing but I think it was lengthier than necessary. ... Read more

Product Description

This book is an intellectual tour de force: a comprehensive Darwinian interpretation of human development. Looking at the entire range of human evolutionary history, Melvin Konner tells the compelling and complex story of how cross-cultural and universal characteristics of our growth from infancy to adolescence became rooted in genetically inherited characteristics of the human brain.

All study of our evolution starts with one simple truth: human beings take an extraordinarily long time to grow up. What does this extended period of dependency have to do with human brain growth and social interactions? And why is play a sign of cognitive complexity, and a spur for cultural evolution? As Konner explores these questions, and topics ranging from bipedal walking to incest taboos, he firmly lays the foundations of psychology in biology.

As his book eloquently explains, human learning and the greatest human intellectual accomplishments are rooted in our inherited capacity for attachments to each other. In our love of those we learn from, we find our way as individuals and as a species. Never before has this intersection of the biology and psychology of childhood been so brilliantly described.

"Nothing in biology makes sense except in the light of evolution," wrote Dobzhansky. In this remarkable book, Melvin Konner shows that nothing in childhood makes sense except in the light of evolution.

Customer Reviews (4)

Worth the effort
Having no formal science background, this book was quite a challenge but well worth the effort. I've read many books on brain science, psychology and human development since my wife was pregnant with our first child. This is one of very few that has no ax to grind. It is a detailed accounting of the major research in human development which has left me humbled by the precariousness of human life and thankful for the luxury of raising children in the twenty first century. I highly recommend.

The definitive work on infant and childhood development.
Emory professor/researcher Melvin Konner, who holds an M.D. and a Ph.D., took 30 years to prepare this comprehensive overview of infancy and childhood - and it shows. Extraordinarily thorough and engagingly written, The Evolution of Childhood is the definitive work on this critically important subject. It is sure to be an immensely useful resource for professionals as well as a fascinating read for the general public.

Jan Hunt, M.Sc., author of The Natural Child: Parenting from the Heart and A Gift for Baby - Un Regalo Para Bebe; co-editor of The Unschooling Unmanual.

Groundbreaking Standard Work
Melvin Konner's "The Evolution of Childhood" is a comprehensive research report in the field of evolutionary oriented developmental psychology, biology,anthropology and neurobiology. It is a groundbreaking book and will establish itself as a standard work. Clear, concise and exciting, even for non specialized readers (the reviewer is a German speaking psycholinguist and had hisprofessional training in the sixties.) Thanks to its excellent apparatus, it provides insight into many areas, e.g.psycholinguistics, sexual development (including homosexuality), or the issues of adoption and many more.

Ponderous Academic Prose
However excellent and insightful the ideas, the prose is too turgid to enable ready access for readers who are not professional academics.And not only professional academics, but professional in the fields of inquiry (especially evolutionary psychology and anthropology), which are the topical areas of the book.This is not a science book construed for a general well-educated and curious audience, but a textbook.It is not often that a book disappoints me as much as this one did because I really wanted to think about the ideas in this book.I was not only impeded by the prose style from "entertaining" those ideas, but so distracted by the style that I kept thinking about the medium instead of the message.So I was thoroughly discouraged and frustrated.A most unpleasant reading experience. ... Read more

Product Description

Product Description
Updated for the first time, the classic book on why cooperation is not only natural but also the best survival strategy

The Evolution of Cooperation addresses a simple yet age-old question: If living things evolve through competition, how can cooperation ever emerge? Despite the abundant evidence of cooperation all around us, there existed no purely naturalistic answer to this question until 1979, when Robert Axelrod famously ran a computer tournament featuring a standard game-theory exercise called The Prisoner's Dilemma. To everyone's surprise, the program that won the tournament, named Tit for Tat, was not only the simplest but the most "cooperative" entrant. This unexpected victory proved that cooperation--one might even say altruism--is mathematically possible and therefore needs no hidden hand or divine agent to create and sustain it. A great roadblock to the understanding of all sorts of behavior was at last removed. The updated edition includes an extensive new chapter on cooperation in cancer cells and among terrorist organizations.

"This book, if read, grasped and applied, could have a profound effect." (Wall Street Journal)

"A fascinating, provocative, and important book." (Douglas R. Hofstadter, author of Godel, Escher, Bach)

... Read more

Customer Reviews (46)

Why cooperate?
In the 1980s, political scientist Robert Axelrod organized two competitions of programs playing iterated prisoner's dilemma against each other; both times, the winner was a 5-line FORTRAN program called Tit for Tat by mathematical psychologist Anatol Rapoport: first cooperate, and then do whatever the opponent did during the previous round. This book grew out of a 9-page article describing these competitions, and it covers more material: suppose a player can choose among several strategies to play against his neighbors in a 2-dimensional universe; can Tit for Tat invade a population of meanies (players who always defect)? Under certain circumstances, it can.

In order to illustrate a game theory concept, Axelrod quotes a 1965 memo to Robert McNamara, LBJ's Secretary of Defense, from his adviser John McNaughton, which was published in the Pentagon Papers. It defines the aims of the United States in South Vietnam as "70%--To avoid a humiliating US defeat (to our reputation as a guarantor). 20%--To keep SVN (and then adjacent) territory from Chinese hands. 10%--To permit the people of SVN to enjoy a better, freer way of life." The sheer self-referentiality of it boggles my mind.

Tit-for-tat !
Great read. Principles can be applied to all areas of your life, especially in business. The book mathematically proves the concept that by cooperating with others both parties will be better off in the long run.

AXELROD SHOULD HAVE WON THE NOBEL PRIZE FOR THIS
This book began as an equally-fascinating article in Scientific American, and I was SO happy to see that he expanded it into a book. I read it twice, and I've bought three copies so far, and have given all of them away.

Basically it has to do with: what's the best general strategy for dealing with the awful, horrible so-called "real" world?

Paradoxically, it is always in everyone's interest to cooperate, but it seems like no one does.I always thought I was the last "good person", and so I abandoned so-called "humanity". Guys *certainly* can't be trusted, and neither can most girls, it seemed. But it turns out that everyone appeared treacherous only because the density of good people is so low.We'redissolved in a sea of evil.

If the good-people-density drops below a mathematically-definable level, it is in everyone's interest to be evil, otherwise you're a sucker. (Or you live naked in a cave in the woods and steal electricity for your wireless broadband, which I do).

Well there IS a simple heuristic which not only works, but it's optimal.It's provable that the most effective general strategy for dealing with a world which contains a mix of good and bad people is to:

1) Be the first to act

2) Be good and kind and giving, just like Jesus

3) Until you get f***ed over, then:

4) Punish the person way disproportionately

5) Wait for their next move

6) Then, for your next move, be exactly as good or evil as they just were

7) Go to step 5

Note that if the other person cooperates, you will both cooperate forever, starting from the first encounter. This strategy is both optimal and adaptive, and unlike some other strategies, is stable (some others episodically try to gradually lower cooperation, add new costs to the other party, or cheat to see if you can get away with it). It also adapts immediately to someone turning republican, and forgives immediately if they show by their behavior that they repent. It requires no memory of past behaviours except the most recent one, it is almost the simplest possible strategy ("always forgive" and "always cheat" are simpler), and it has never been beaten in computer simulations even by immensely more complex strategies.

I also like this strategy's name: tit for tat.It sounds like breast spanking!

Its only flaw is that it only works for people who know WTF is going on. That is, it becomes unstable if information isn't perfect, and when it does, it can't recover, even if the other player is using the same strategy.

For example, if you think your boyfriend cheated on you, or that an employee stole money, or that the country next to yours attacked your ship--and you're WRONG, not only you will punish the other party for something they didn't do, but you'll blithely ignore their assertions of innocence (pissing them off more) and, from their point of view, you viciously attacked for no reason.

That can (and has) led to an unending death spiral of recrimination in which each punishment by A is taken by B as an unprovoked attack which must be itself punished.

It has been proven that there is no general strategy which works optimally all the time under conditions of imperfect information. It HAS been proven though, both theoretically and empirically, that this is the best general strategy.

It sounds easy, but it's not. For one, it involves blithely punishing people viciously and cruelly. You normal people generally have no problem with that part. But much harder to do (for non-autistics) is completely forgetting about revenge and dealing with what IS, right now. Your revenge happens exactly once, then after that, you forget that it ever happened. People don;t ever want to do this. Their egos get all involved, and they f**k everything up.

Read the book; it's great.And look at the ratings; everyone else thinks so too!

Why is cooperation among human possible?
Robert Axelrod's "The Evolution of Cooperation" is a classic in our understanding of why cooperation occurs in humans. The book begins with a simple question (Page vii): "When should a person cooperate, and when should that person be selfish, in an ongoing interaction with another person?" The ultimate explanation for the choice, according to Axelrod (and evolutionary theorist William Hamilton) is evolution. This is thoroughly discussed in Chapter 5, which outlines how cooperation could evolve as an adaptive behavior within a species.

One key part of this book is a round robin tournament in which a variety of strategies are tested in an "Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma" game. Prisoner's Dilemma is a game among the variety of those used in what is called Game Theory. The premise is simple: two thieves have been caught by the police. The policy offer a deal: Rat out your partner, s/he gets a tough sentence and the turncoat gets off. If both rat one another out, they both get a tougher sentence (although not as bad as if one person keeps quiet and the other one squeals). The assumption is that neither trusts the other; they rat one another out; they are both worse off than if they had kept their mouths shut.

One approach to Prisoner's Dilemma that did the best was Anatol Rapoport's entry, "TIT FOR TAT." Here, one keeps one's mouth shut, for example, as long as one's confederate does not rat him/her out. If the other person rats one out, you turn the tables and rat him/her out. If the other player quits ratting out, then one ceases ratting the other out. This was the simplest of the entries, according to Axelrod. But it is the one that worked best. In short, cooperate as long as the other player cooperates; be nasty when the other player is nasty; don't hold grudges and keep punishing if the other person begins cooperating.

Of course, things are actually more complex than this, but the above gives a sense of the nature of the winning strategy. It does raise questions about the common assumption that everyone is selfish and will always do what is needed to advance one's interests at the expense of others. It begins to raise approaches to understanding "altruism," self-sacrifice that benefits others (and would also benefit the altruist in the long run).

At any rate, this is a thought provoking book and a genuine classic, with many applications in public life and in our own daily lives.

Hope for Diplomacy
In his book, "The Evolution of Cooperation," Robert Axelrod states that cooperation can be achieved by all parties and he further explains how cooperation may emerge between enemies in unfavorable conditions.Axelrod uses historical examples to demonstrate his thesis as well as supports his examples with variables such as cooperation theory, game theory, and reciprocity discussed throughout the book.

The international system level of analysis is featured significantly throughout his book, and he employs its basic characteristic of posing general questions to effectively describe patterns of outcomes, although not determine specific outcomes.For example, Axelrod inquires how the live and let live system emerged, how it was/ is sustained, when might it end, and what are the limitations of its use?He then examines how each concept and theory can be further elaborated.By varying the focus of his analysis, he is able to study elements of cooperation between both protagonists and antagonists.

Axelrod's proposition is empirical in its purposes and is meant to explain how cooperation may emerge.He suggests that cooperation can be as simple as acting offensively but in a predictive manner, and that cooperation between opposing forces does not imply that either side must surrender physically, morally, or in principle (to any demands) by the other side.Axelrod states that cooperation may emerge in situations which, at first glance, probably would not naturally elicit cooperation.

International relations theory is essentially, an analysis of different states to determine how eachmay cooperate with another and the relationships that develop when states decide to cooperate with one another.Whether referred to as diplomacy, reciprocity, crisis management, live and let live technique, or otherwise, cooperation and cooperative resolution equals success.


... Read more

Product Description
Everything you were taught about evolution is wrong. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (201)

Icons of Philosophical Naturalism
Is evolution true?One of the main reasons we are given for an affirmative answer is that the vast majority of biologists believe that it is.Indeed the scientific consensus should not be easily dismissed.After all, science, due to the rigors of the scientific method and peer review, is said to be self-correcting.But in the case of evolution, is it that simple?Biologists are of necessity specialists; they can have first hand knowledge of evidences for evolution only within their specific field.How then is an embryologist going to learn about the fossil evidence, or a paleontologist about genetic evidence?The answer is, from the same sources as non-biologists: that is, from university biology textbooks and magazine articles.

Icons of evolution are specific examples that turn up over and over again in the textbooks, held up as proof that evolutionhas occurred and does indeed still occur.Some of these include Darwin's tree of life, vertebrate embryos, and peppered moths, among others.Do these conclusively prove Darwin's theory?Author Jonathan Wells examines ten of these icons.What makes his work worthy of attention is that he gets all his data from the primary, peer-reviewed scientific literature.He cites scientists who are experts in the field in question;they are not creationists, but scientists who are in fact persuaded that Darwin's theory, at least at some level, is true.

The most important icon of evolution is Darwin's tree of life.The theory of evolution predicts that beginning with a universal common ancestor, we should expect to see a bottom-up pattern in the fossil record.Small changes should appear first in the oldest geologic strata, gradually increasing in diversity until we see phylum-level differences at the top, in the most recent strata.But with what has been called the biological big bang, the Cambrian explosion, we see just the opposite: the distinct body plans of the phyla appear fully formed and without evolutionary precursors in the Cambrian strata of 530 million years ago.Subsequent diversification occurs but never outside of these body plans.Rather than a tree, the picture is more like a lawn, or an orchard.This top-down pattern that we actually see turns Darwin's prediction on its head.How do the textbooks deal with this?Wells tells us that they either ignore the Cambrian explosion altogether or give it one line and wave it off.If you get your information from the textbooks you'll come away thinking that the fossil record is a bulwark of support for Darwinian evolution.

Vertebrate embryos are an important icon of evolution because Darwin recognized the problems posed by the fossil record.He was impressed by the drawings by embryologist Ernst Haeckel of embryos from various classes of vertebrates which purported to show that they are virtually identical in their earliest stages, and become noticeably different only as they develop.Darwin was convinced that this was due to common ancestry and in fact considered this "by far the strongest single class of facts in favor of" his theory.These exact drawings are found in many modern textbooks, including Douglas Futuyma's 1999 graduate level textbook called "Evolutionary Biology."Yet biologists have known since Darwin's time that Haeckel faked his drawings.In fact vertebrate embryos never look alike at their earliest stages; they clearly follow different pathways and only superficially converge at a middle stage which Haeckel exaggerated and called the first stage.

The significance of the peppered moths icon is that it supposedly demonstrates evolution happening right before our eyes.The percentage of light and dark moths in a given population seemed to fluctuate in direct relation to the tree trunk darkening soot from pollution.It was thought to be clearly a case of natural selection, the selecting agent being bird predation and camouflage.Most of the textbooks Wells surveyed include pictures of these moths resting on tree trunks, either camouflaged or exposed, depending on the extent of tree trunk-darkening pollution.But further investigation showed that following anti-pollution laws, the lighter varieties returned to abundance before the tree trunks lightened.This led to the discovery, made in the 1980s, thatpeppered moths do not naturally rest on tree trunks, but reside higher in the upper canopy.So where do the photos come from?They had to be staged by gluing dead specimens or manually placing live ones (which are sluggish in daylight) on the trunks.Clearly the picture is more complicated: natural selection is not demonstrated by showing moths outside of their natural hiding places, and it is inappropriate for textbooks to uncritically continue to reproduce these photos.

Is evolution true?If these and the other icons of evolution that we find in textbooks are the best evidence we have, how can we say yes?To appeal to the scientific consensus no longer carries as much weight if these icons helped to establish that consensus.And if science is a self-correcting enterprise, why do these distortions last for so long?Returning once again to Douglas Futuyma's textbook "Evolutionary Biology", we find a remark which is not unique but is found in different words in other textbooks (eg. the promotion of Richard Dawkins' blind watchmaker thesis in another book): "Darwin made theological or spiritual explanations of the life processes superfluous...It was Darwin's theory of evolution...that provided a crucial plank to the platform of mechanism and materialism that has since dominated Western thought."

The commitment to naturalistic philosophy that gave rise to Darwinism in the first place is still clearly an a priori which as a first principle makes the icons of evolution seem reasonable.But when evidence is distorted in order to further a particular worldview, science suffers.Darwinian evolution could in theory still be true, but we are not going to arrive at an answer if science is straightjacketed by the demands that it conform to a particular view of reality.Science needs to be the search for truth and to that end, the icons of evolution need to be removed from textbooks.

DANGEROUS LIES
Here are some reasons why this book is wrong (and dangerous)

1. Evolution is a fact

2. The evidence for evolution is overwhelming

3. Nothing in biology makes sense apart from evolution

4. Evolution is a fact

5. Wells is a creationist

6. Creationists are stupid

7. Creationists are dangerous

8. Wells doesn't understand science

That's all you need to know about this book. So there.

Is evolution a proven fact? No.
Berkley educated doctor of biology Johnathon Wells has written an expose that cuts the legs out from under the "Icons" of evolution.He points out what is science fact and what is science fiction.He shows how biology textbooks that are being used in our highschools and colleges continue to knowingly include false information.He cites booklets published by the National Academy of Sciences, an institution that many consider the nations premier science organization, that contain false and misleading information.
I would think that those who truly believe in the truths of evolution would be outraged at those who publish this misinformation, not the author for pointing them out, because it certainly reflects poorly on the whole theory.If one can not believe one statement how can he believe the next.Its been ten years since this book was published and I would like to think that these errors have been corrected but I am doubtful.
People on both sides of the issue can get something out of this book.

Exposing the lies of the religion of Darwinism.
This is a well written book and contains a plethora of quotations from leading religious leaders of Darwinian evolution. Having read many of the "1 star" ratings, it is obvious that members of this religion will not concede defeat. Though this book does a great job of exposing the lies of evolution it will not convince those who have already made up their mind. However, those who question the hypothesis or are "fence sitters" will find this work very helpful.

I would also like to point out that Wells defeated and refuted these religious icons without ever mentioning a creator or God/gods. This is rather significant given the fact that evolutionist always cower behind the "its religion, not science" excuse for not allowing counter perspectives on this issue.

Revelation on the road to Seattle: Who or what is Jonathan Wells?
Jonathan Wells is a member of the Unification Church, better known as the Moonies. Their leader, Sun Myung Moon, claims to be the Messiah. Moon also claims that Jesus Christ failed in his mission, and has concocted a new scripture, known as the Divine Principle. This new "Messiah" hates the Christian cross, since it reminds him of the failure of Jesus. Moon has actually started a campaign called "Take down the cross".

Evangelicals usually regard the Moonies as a cult.

Except, it seems, when Moonies write creationist books!

Wells is a fellow and leading member of the Discovery Institute, an evangelical-dominated think-tank based in Seattle that concentrates on creationist propaganda ("intelligent design"). Now, this is strange. Don't evangelicals believe that cultists go straight to Hell for all eternity? Don't they at the very least regard Moonies as blasphemers? Don't evangelicals regard the Unification Church as part of "the kingdom of the cults"? Would the Discovery Institute co-operate with Jehovah's Witnesses or Mormons?

The counter-cultist missionaries of various evangelical churches should give the Discovery Institute a call and ask what's going on.

Don't count on it, however. After all, these are the people who gave us "stealth candidates" in school board elections, pretend to support Israel while organizing "messianic Judaism" (a phoney "Jewish" front for Protestant fundamentalism) and have no qualms about using Deists such as Antony Flew or lukewarm Episcopalians such as the senior George Bush to further their agenda. They also attempt to claim Isaac Newton (an anti-Trinitarian) or Albert Einstein (a pantheist) on their side. So why should we be surprised if fundamentalist evangelicals co-operate with Jonathan Wells? He may be a cultist but he is, apparently, a *useful* cultist. After all, the Moonies have poured in a lot of money to conservative political causes in the United States, including the daily paper "Washington Times". One can only speculate how Wells got on board that little think-tank in Seattle...

As for his PhD in biology from Harvard, he seems to have entered the PhD program at the express order of Sun Myung Moon (whom he calls "Father" - another blasphemy if you are an evangelical). It's unclear whether he has ever published any scientific papers. He certainly doesn't work as a scientist, and uses his science degree mostly as propaganda. Indeed, the very fact that Wells rejects Darwinian evolution in favour of "old earth creationism" and the Divine Principle, proves that his attitude isn't scientific.

The co-operation between Wells and the Discovery Institute shows that "scientific creationism" is neither about science nor, strictly speaking, about religion. It's all politics.

Driving a wedge between Jonathan Wells and the God-fearing evangelicals, Calvinists and traditionalist Episcopalians of the DI might prove even harder than disproving "the icons of evolution".
... Read more

Product Description
A manifesto for and an example of a new kind of history, a biological history, and not just of the prehistoric era Scientists have long believed that the 'great leap forward' that occurred some 40,000 to 50,000 years ago in Europe marked the end of significant biological evolution in humans. In this stunning account of our evolutionary history, top scholars Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpending reject this conventional wisdom and reveal that the human species has undergone a storm of genetic change much more recently. Human evolution in fact accelerated after civilisation arose, they contend, and these ongoing changes have played a pivotal role in human history. They argue that biology explains the expansion of the Indo-Europeans, the European conquest of the Americas, and European Jews' rise to intellectual prominence. In each of these cases, the key was recent genetic change: adult milk tolerance in the early Indo-Europeans that allowed for a new way of life, increased disease resistance among the Europeans settling America, and new versions of neurological genes among European Jews.Ranging across subjects as diverse as human domestication, Neanderthal hybridization, and IQ tests, Cochran and Harpending's analysis demonstrates convincingly that human genetics have changed and can continue to change much more rapidly than scientists have previously believed. A provocative and fascinating look at human evolution, "The 10,000 Year Explosion" reveals the ongoing interplay between culture and biology in the making of the human race. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (37)

Evolving as we speak
The ideas exposed in Gregory Cochran and Henry Harpering's book "The 10,000 year explosion How civilization accelerated human evolution," seem 'way out' at first. but I suspect in little time most will be considered conventional wisdom. It is clear that the science of genetic anthropology will leap forward in the 21st century. As the human genome is delved deeply into (along with the genome of prehistoric man, animals and extinct hominids) a new paradigm will form to explain our origins.
In chapter 2 "The Neanderthal Within" they suggest that Neanderthal and modern humans mated. Even if this was occasional advantageous alleles from this union may have entered the gene pool by the hybridization of the species and increased with time. "In just this way, a tiny bit of Neanderthal ancestry thrown into the mix tens of thousands of years ago could have resulted in many people today, possibly even all modern humans, carrying the advantageous Neanderthal version of some genes." (page 44) They go on to hypothesize that some of these advantageous genes may have led to a creative explosion or leap forward in innovation. This possibly helped modern man 40,000 years ago to populate Europe eventually resulting in the extinction of Neanderthals.
This sure seemed 'out there' against all conventional wisdom at the time the book was published in 2009.
However in the May 6, 2010 edition of ScienceGreen, et al reported that they had sequenced almost all of the Neanderthal genome using bones from three Neanderthals living in Europe 40,000 years ago. They compared this to DNA from five people from France,China, West and South Africa and Papua New Guinea. They found that up to 4% of the DNA of modern man from all regions other than Africa were Neanderthal DNA. Presumably this hybridization happened in the Mid East 60,000 years ago after homo sapiens moved out of africa, but before they dispersed throughout the world.
Whether this was the spark that led to modern man's competitive advantage over Neanderthals remains to be seen. You never know what may be published in the next few years.
Other chapters describe evolutionary changes brought on by agriculture, mutations allowing tolerance of milk/lactose in adults, loss of pigment in northern climates to prevent Vitamin D deficiency, disease resistance aiding the European conquest of the new world and how the Ashkenazi Jews got their smarts.
Many of their contentions are controversial. It will be interesting to see how many withstand the test of time.

It has come to my attention that the authors have in the past promoted the view that genetics play a significant role in determining intelligence, human nature and personality. I do not agree with any theory linking race with intelligence. I find this much to simple a solution to a very complex process.
I can no longer recommend this book.

Great book
I would recommend the book to anyone interested in anthropology.This book is very well written.The writing is very clear in what is being conveyed as new ideas versus what are already established theories/facts.The book is also easy to read and understand, even without any pre-existing knowledge of the subject matter.

Get in Touch WithYour Inner Neanderthal
This book makes the astounding claim that our evolution has sped up 100 times faster in the past 10,000 years than the previous six million years.Even people 4,000 years ago were genetically and culturally different from us.

How do we know this? One way is from looking at both human and chimpanzee DNA.We know we split off from chimps about 6 million years ago, so we can compare the genetic differences and thus the long-term rate of genetic change.The rate of change the past few thousand years is 100 times greater than the long-term rate over the past few million years.If we'd always evolved at such a fast rate, the difference between chimp and human DNA would be much greater than it is.

If evolution this fast seems impossible, then consider how different dogs are from wolves.It took less than 15,000 years to go from wolf to a Chihuahua. There's no other mammal on earth with more varied forms and sizes than dogs.Dogs also vary widely in behavior.For example, some can learn much quicker than others.Border collies just need 5 repetitions of a new command to learn it and follow the command correctly 95% of the time, but a basset hound will need 80 to 100 repetitions and only obey correctly 25% of the time.

And it isn't just a dogs appearance, dogs are much better at understanding our commands and gestures than wolves are.

Russian scientist Dmitri Belyaev created a domestic fox in just 40 years by selecting the most tame foxes in each generation.

As far as humans go, it's pretty obvious evolution has taken place the past 50,000 years - just look at all the varieties of skin, eye, and hair color. Such skin-deep appearances were all we could see until recently, but with genetic testing we can see more than superficial differences - we also vary in bones, liver and brain function, disease resistance, etc from each other quite a bit.All of us can speak and have evolved better hearing as well to understand complex language and perhaps to better eavesdrop.

For a long time scientists have been baffled about why humans made a very sudden shift about 50,000 years ago - suddenly advanced, complex art, culture, tools, and weapons came on the scene. For several decades now scientists have been trying to understand what happened.

This is different from the overall "prime mover" - of why we are the way we are.Recent evidence supports the thermal hypothesis, other proposals include Man the Hunter, tool making, speech, social intelligence, taming fire, a constantly changing climate, etc and most likely of all, a synergy of these and many factors not listed as Peter Corning explains so well in "Nature's Magic".

Once our amazing culture evolved, we were no longer bound by natural selection - we didn't need to evolve fur when we moved into colder climates, because we could make warm clothes, and we didn't need to evolve strong muscles to hunt large animals - we could build better weapons.

And once we had better weapons, such as the long distance spear throwing atlatl, humans didn't have to be muscular heavy hulks risking their lives every time they hunted.We became smaller, needed less food, and perhaps that's why we out-competed Neanderthals.

But how could we have evolved so rapidly 50,000 years ago?Here's the bombshell theory - we interbred with Neanderthals!

This book came out before the recent discovery we have one to four percent Neanderthal DNA.But none of the articles about this discussed the implications - that this is why we underwent such an explosive cultural change roughly 50,000 years ago and became fully modern humans.

The authors explain that a common misconception is that people think that Neanderthals were closer to apes than people, but that is not at all true. They also had large brains, speech, and cooperated highly with each other when they hunted together.

We had too small a population to have enough mutations to evolve quickly, the only way it makes sense for this sudden change to have happened is for us to have acquired useful genes from Neanderthals.All it would have take is for a few dozen half human - half-Neanderthal babies over thousands of years for us to gain their best genetic strengths.

What would be interesting to know is whether it was mainly male humans and female Neanderthals or the reverse.Such analyses were done on the ancestry of Mexicans, and their maternal ancestry is mainly Amerindian, but their paternal ancestry is Spanish.

Ultimately, the most important result of our recent evolution was our ability to innovate.Every new innovation led to new selective pressures, which caused us to evolve in new ways.The most important innovation, and the one that caused the most evolution the past 10,000 years, was the invention of agriculture.

Once we had agriculture, the human population grew enormously, which meant a much larger pool of potentially beneficial mutations happening - 100 times more than in the Pleistocene.

Agriculture also created diets early farmers weren't adapted to.They ate way more carbohydrates and less protein, didn't get all the vitamins they needed, and lived much shorter and unhealthier lives.

But mutations arose that changed that.Here's just one example (that you may know): About 8,000 years ago the ability to drink milk as an adult arose in Europe, and now about 95% of people in Denmark and Sweden have no problems with digesting dairy products, and 80% of the rest of Europeans, on average.A different mutation that did the same thing arose in East Africa, and now 90% of the Tutsi are lactose tolerant.Densely populated areas evolved disease resistance, the ability to drink alcohol, and many other non-skin-deep abilities that we can now "see" with genetic studies.

At times in the Old World, when war wasn't the main source of deaths, famine and malnutrition limited populations that reached carrying capacity.The poorest were so short on food that they didn't reproduce themselves, while the elite had more than the two children required to replace themselves and had twice the number of surviving offspring as the poor.The least successful rich children became the new farmers, with the result that after a thousand years or so, everyone was descended from the wealthy classes.

Once the ruling elites existed, they didn't have a hard time controlling farmers, who couldn't leave their land in protest, or they'd die, which stuck them with paying whatever taxes, being conscripted into wars and in general endure whatever the elites dished out.

The authors suggest that in the end, people were ultimately domesticated by elite rulers, who weeded out aggressive fighting peasants, just as farmers weed out their most aggressive animals.The elites selected for a population that submitted to authority. Attention deficit disorder doesn't exist in China - the elites completely bred that behavior out of the population.I found the whole idea fascinating and scary, the full discussion is on pages 110-113.Maybe that explains why Americans have allowed the greatest disparity in wealth between rich and poor in our nation's history to exist, haven't marched with torches and pitchforks on Wall Street, and so on.

A chapter of the book is devoted to why Ashkenazi Jews are so much brighter than other populations.Although they comprise less than one in 600 people, they've won one in four of all Nobel science and too many other achievements to list here. Basically the hypothesis is that because they were forced to hold difficult white collar jobs for centuries in finance and related areas, and couldn't marry outside their group, evolution selected for intelligence.Unfortunately, this selection comes with genetic disorders of Tay Sachs and other diseases.

Well of course the problem with book reviews is that they're too short and have no peer-reviewed scientific references, unlike the book, nor can the logic and details be explained, so if you think any or all of the above is crazy, read the book.And if you're at all interested in the mystery of how we evolved, this fills in a few of the puzzle pieces that I haven't seen explained elsewhere

More Required Reading
Another book I think everyone should read because it both expands our understanding and peaks our curiosity about human genetics.The premise of "The 10,000 Year Explosion" is the rate of human evolution is accelerating.With modern techniques for dissecting the human genome science is now able to better approximate the dates of the major changes in human evolution.While factors such as migration, mutation, etc were discussed (as in other books) the authors believe that the significant changes in evolution have occurred much more recently than previously believed.

Unlike more technical books on this subject, "The 10,000 Year Explosion" is compact and easy to read (and understand) despite the span of time it covers. What I liked best is that this book made me think about what I was taught in school and made me want to read more on the subject.Any book that makes me want to read more is a book worth reading.Highly, highly recommended.

Ill never look at history or anthropology the same way again.
The authors have done an incredible job of covering what might otherwise be a difficult subject matter.To paraphrase Einstein: they made it as simple as possible, but no simpler.The writing style is always engaging and at times surprisingly funny!The book is a very quick read, but you will find yourself digesting the ideas it contains long after you finish reading.

As to the main points of the book, some are startling when you first read them, but as the authors effortlessly back them up you realize that nothing they are saying is in any way controversial.They aren't peddling some far fetched theory;they are merely stating the known facts organized in a way which at times pierces current PC orthodoxy.

If you feel passionately that all children must be taught that people come from monkeys but otherwise are entirely uninterested in evolution, this isn't the book for you.Otherwise pick up a copy of this fascinating and easy to read book ASAP and you won't be disappointed. ... Read more

Product Description
Evolution, Second Edition is a comprehensive treatment of contemporary evolutionary biology that is directed toward an undergraduate audience. It addresses major themes including the history of evolution, evolutionary processes, adaptation, and evolution as an explanatory framework at levels of biological organization ranging from genomes to ecological communities. Throughout, the text emphasizes the interplay between theory and empirical tests of hypotheses, thus acquainting students with the process of science. Teachers and students will find the list of important concepts and terms in each chapter a helpful guide, and will appreciate the dynamic figures and lively photographs. The content of all chapters has been updated. Contributors Scott V. Edwards and John R. True have once again provided authoritative chapters on, respectively, Evolution of Genes and Genomes and Evolution and Development, two of the most rapidly developing subjects in evolutionary biology. A final chapter on Evolutionary Science and Creationism treats such topics as the nature of science and the practical applications of evolutionary biology. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (16)

Excellent Biology Textbook
I found this book informative and engaging. Futuyma covers a wide breadth of biology and provides case studies and recent research to illustrate his points.

Also, I found the loose-leaf version useful. It was slightly cheaper, and I was able to split it up in a 3-ring binder so I could read the portions I needed wherever I was at the time. However, be aware that the pages can become crumpled because there is _literally_ no binding, just 3 holes on the left-side margin. I was surprised when I received the book.

So far, So extremely good
I'm a senior in biology, and have been using this book for my evolution class.Well, not much can be said other than it's great.Well written, good use of the technical language, very nice examples, etc, etc, etc...

cheap and nice
Great book. Just a little easier to get teared when you put it into the binder.

great product
Buyer easy to contact, flexible and helpful. Product received in good time and in great condition

Great
The book came a lot sooner than what i thought it would and it was in great condition. ... Read more

Product Description
Few issues have revealed deeper divisions in our society than the debate between creationism and evolution, between religion and science. Yet from the fray, Reverend Michael Dowd has emerged as a reconciler, finding faith strengthened by the power of reason.

With evidence from contemporary astrophysics, geology, biology, anthropology, and evolutionary psychology, Thank God for Evolution lays out a compelling argument for how religion and science can be mutually enriching forces in our lives.

Praised by Nobel laureates in the scientific community and religious leaders alike, Thank God for Evolution will expand the horizon of what is possible for self, for relationships, and for our world. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (66)

Great concepts - poorly written
The concepts, ideas and logic presented are good and sound but the writing could be better.If you can get pass the word smithing the postulations are solid.This book fits my own personal beliefs developed over decades and could blend in with most religions/beliefs current and past.

For me, everyone has their own personal vision of god/creator and we should respect each others point of view even if we don't believe in it as long as it is not being forced on others. [If you don't support where you are at you should be able to seek your own truth without fear of retribution.]

If I attempt to give further review or comments then I'd be writing my own personal version of this book.

A Giant Leap in the Right Direction
I have not yet finished reading this book, but I can tell you it is an important book. I always felt that religion had certain evolutionary advantages and should not be dismissed. I've long felt the need for a world-view that has the social advantages of organized religion and pays respect to our cultural traditions without being dogmatic to the point of requiring blindness to reality. What Dowd offers here fits the bill. He suggest a variant of Christianity (and hints at variants of other faiths) that lacks dogma and welcomes change. Every atheist or agnostic should hope that such a shift in religious thinking takes hold.

Dowd's Christianity does require that Christians step back from literal interpretations of the Bible, and some Christians simply be unwilling to do so. However, when offered a viable alternative that respects their traditions, some thoughtful Christians will embrace evolution when they previously could not have. That puts us closer to a threshold at which Biblical Literalists lose their cultural and political influence. Dowd should be commended for helping to push us in that direction.

There's so much more I could say. Everybody should read this book. Whether in the end they agree or not, atheists and theists can learn understand and respect each other.

A trojan horse
I have no problem with atheists, nor with reading books written by atheists arguing their lack of belief in religion. Most religious people will be familiar with arguments like:

- Religion is obsolete. It was created to give answers to questions that we now know only science can answer.
- Belief in a personal God who had life in mind is the remnant of a flat earth culture.
- There is no evidence for religious beliefs.
- Religion is like language, your place of birth determines what you believe.
- History is filled with unbelievable miracle stories, why should your religion's miracles be real?
- There are many parallels to your cherished beliefs (such as the resurrection or virgin birth) in other religions.

One does, however, NOT expect to find them in a book that claims to reconcile science with religion. You will find the above arguments and many others in this book, which teaches a "gospel" that is nothing more than a sentimental form of atheism.There is no God who created the universe with a purpose. God is a metaphor for the universe with it's beautiful emergent complexity. Science is public revelation, all religious texts are private revelations (basically erroneous myths with some glimmers of truth that can be reinterpreted in an evolutionary light etc). Religious terms like sin, salvation and revelation are given completely new evolutionary meanings that no atheist would object to.

I have no problem with people viewing reality in this way. The book contains many interesting facts, and explains evolution quite well, which is why I give it two stars.

What I DO have a problem with is the deep dishonesty of selling a book that promises to marry faith and science, when the marriage consists in Science murdering his wife Faith, and then falling in love with a sentimental painting of himself.

There is no substantial difference between this book and The God Delusion by Richard Dawkins. It presents the same worldview with some added makeup to make it prettier. A more honest title would be: "The beauty of the godless universe".

If you want a book that actually tries to reconcile faith with science, get the excellent God's Universe by Owen Gingerich instead.

Evolving Language
Wonderful perspective that grounds us in a new beautiful language about our relationship with divinity.

Thank God for Evolution

This book is totally interesting, and takes a person back in time, to understand just where we come from.It explains the various

parts of the brain's evolution and how we react in situations, according to the part of the brain that is activated.It encourages one

to learn how to be aware, of what aspect is showing up, so one can intelligently respond, instead of responding by instinct.

It is very worth the time to read and contemplate the information from such an informed source.

Sincerely,
Marilyn ... Read more

Product Description
Stretching from the distant past into the remote future, from primordial Earth to the stars, Evolution is a soaring symphony of struggle, extinction, and survival; a dazzling epic that combines a dozen scientific disciplines and a cast of unforgettable characters to convey the grand drama of evolution in all its awesome majesty and rigorous beauty. Sixty-five million years ago, when dinosaurs ruled the Earth, there lived a small mammal, a proto-primate of the species Purgatorius. From this humble beginning, Baxter traces the human lineage forward through time. The adventure that unfolds is a gripping odyssey governed by chance and competition, a perilous journey to an uncertain destination along a route beset by sudden and catastrophic upheavals. It is a route that ends, for most species, in stagnation or extinction. Why should humanity escape this fate?Amazon.com Review
Following up his cosmic Manifold series, Stephen Baxter peers back on a more prosaic history in the worthy yet uneven Evolution. The book is nothing less than a novelization of human evolution, a mega-Michener treatment of 65 million years starring a host of smart, furry primates representing Homo sapiens's ancestry. Each stage of our ancestry is represented by a character of progressively increasing intelligence, empathy, and brain size, who must survive predation and other perils long enough to keep the natural-selection ball rolling. While Baxter carefully follows some widely accepted theories of evolution--punctuated equilibrium, for instance--he also strays from the known in postulating air whales and sentient, tool-wielding dinosaurs. And why not? There's nothing in the fossil record to contradict his musings about those things, or about the first instances of mammalian altruism and deception, which he also lets us observe. From little Purga, a shrewlike mammal scurrying under the feet of ankylosaurs, all the way through Ultimate, the last human descendant, Baxter adds drama and a strong story arc to our past and future. But he spends too much time on details of the various prehumans' lives, which can become repetitive: fight, mate, die, ad infinitum. And readers eager for a science-fictional adventure will only find satisfaction in the posthuman chapters at the end. Despite these flaws, Evolution grips the attention with an epoch-spanning tale of the random changes that rule our genetic heritage. Recommended. --Therese Littleton ... Read more

Customer Reviews (79)

horrible
I am an avid and patient reader, an I also own most of the books Mr. Baxter wrote. By far this is the worst of them, and one of the worst books I ever touched...a disgrace.

A Game of Chance
Take a walk with our ancestors (the primates) as they evolve over millions of years from Purgatorius, a small rodent like creature to a mammal that looks a lot like a lemur, then a monkey, next an ape and finally into the upright walkers like homo erectus...the neanderthals and more...

this books is science fiction...it's science faction...although Baxter says not to use it as a text book...this is a brillant look at evolution and probably my favorite science fiction book of all time.

The book begins as the comet (Devil's Tail) is about to smash into earth laying waste to every dinosaur on the planet (via firestorm and nuclear winter). It puts us center stage for one of the biggest mass extinctions in the history of our planet. The only survivors are turtles, crocodiles, sharks, some birds, rodents, and a small hominid named Purga.

Move through our evolutionary chain, as Baxter tells a story 65 million years in the making...and 500 million years beyond our present...

Beyond today
Funny, although I enjoyed Stephen Baxter's ideas of our early ancestors and how they might have lived, and hypothesized their ability to make tools and reason, I thought that his projections to be more interesting. I can't look at my town's footprint now without thinking about what kind of heavy metals and poisons are soaking into the soil--only to be present and inflicting damage for eons beyond human life. I found the ending to be realistic; resembling a martian landscape which makes geologic sense in that the mountains do degrade into flatlands over time. This story sticks with you; once you read it, you can't forget it. Our human impact on Earth becomes even more relevant.

Highly recommended
I loved this book and author. This was the first book I read by Stephen Baxter and I very impressed at how good of a writer he is.

Amazing book!!!
I love this book!It is fiction, of course, but well researched.So, what is this book?This book is the next best thing to a time machine.In fact, this is the book that I've always wanted to write myself.Now I don't have to! Yippee!Stephen did a far better job than I ever could anyway.I love history, and I love pre-history."History," the written record of human events, is all well and good.We have enormous amounts of information with which to reconstruct a narrative of human life, thought, troubles, and triumphs.Prehistory, on the other hand, is much different.We have lots of information, but the farther back in time you go the more speculative any narrative will be.I want a time machine so bad!!I want to set up a blind and watch the dinosaurs go about their day.I want to watch early primates as they branch out into different species, see them exploit different niches, and face the challenges that among one group favor the hominid way of doing things and ultimately leads to modern humans.This book gave me exactly what I wanted, lacking an actual time machine.It covers a great deal of time, 65 million years and more, in 600 or so pages.You get detailed little glimpses into the lives of our various ancestors.How they lived, how they thought, the problems they faced, etc.Speculation?Yes.Still, it's well researched and you get an honest sense of "being there."These encounters are brief due to the amount of time covered in one book.It's very well done though.There are several periods that I would love to see expanded into a stand alone novel.(Stephen, are you listening?)I am savoring this book.I am almost finished, and really look forward to seeing what the far future holds for humanity(this is fiction, remember) but I feel a real sense of dread as I near those last pages.I don't want it to end!I love books like this, and I hate books like this!Why must they end?Buy this book!!You will enjoy it! ... Read more

Product Description
Petroski tells fascinating stories about the arduous processes that resulted in paper clips, Post-its, Phillips-head screwdrivers, Scotch tape, and fast-food "clamshell" containers. "Petroski . . . an examines the simplest . . . tools in our lives with an appraising eye."--Washington Post Book World. 45 illus.Amazon.com Review
This surprising book may appear to be about the simple thingsof life--forks, paper clips, zippers--but in fact it is a far-flunghistorical adventure on the evolution of common culture. To trace thefork's history, Duke University professor of civil engineering HenryPetroski travels from prehistoric times to Texas barbecue to CardinalRichelieu to England's Industrial Revolution to the American CivilWar--and beyond. Each item described offers a cultural history lesson,plus there's plenty of engineering detail for those so inclined. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (30)

The Evolution of Useful Things
Interesting book- lots of history on various everyday items.Can be read through or just in bits as interest dictates.Fun source book.

the evolution of many everyday items should be more interesting than this
The concept is interesting: take a deep look at some of the most common items in our home and consider how they came into their current form.His main thesis is that form does not follow function, but rather that form follows failure.When presented with a tool that doesn't do quite what you want it to do, the inventor figures out a solution to the problem.

Great idea.Bad execution.The author keeps on circling back to the same points, over and over and over again. The worst is the discussion of forks.I'm still not sure how I slogged through that section, talking about the number of tines and the length of the tines and the width of the individual tines and the handle.There was some interesting information in there, but it could have been covered in a couple of pages, not the unending pages upon pages that this went on.

There was so much information in this book. and there were some great design stories found in the pages here.But it got buried in too many details and too many repetitions of the authors main thesis.

Did not meet expectations
I expected this book to be a collection of "stories" about the development of everyday items.Instead I read about how and why inventors invent new things.Although this is somewhat interesting, the book has not been work the purchase.

Fascinating insights, a little dry
Henry Petroski writes an indepth look at how everyday items evolve. He thesis, which he rarely tires of repeating, is that the form of an object follows its failure. He rejects the saying "form follows function" as being quaint and incomplete. He uses numerous examples of the evolution of the paperclip, fork, scotch tape and other common items to illustrate that objects change not due to far sighted design, but instead to users finding fault with how the object does its job and trying to improve it. The book can be a little dry and repetitive at times but offers fascinating insights into why a fork has four tines or why the paperclip looks the way it does.

So INTRIGUING
this book is so intriguing and offers such great insight into the world of design, patents, and the evolutionary history of some of the most "mundane" objects in our everyday lives! definitely worth a read! then pass it on to a friend! ... Read more