Link to review: Lives of Confucius: Civilization’s Greatest Sage Through the Ages.
The Problem of Democracy
Link to review: The Problem of Democracy.
The Humans Who Went Extinct: Why Neanderthals Died Out and We Survived
Link to review: Pruning the family tree, chance & inevitability.
The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us
Link to review: The illusions of intuition.
The Nurture Assumption: Why Children Turn Out the Way They Do
Short comment: “Behavior genetics” you can use. Every potential parent should read this book.
The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
Short comment: An often forgotten gem in Steven Pinker’s oeuvre. More technical than The Blank Slate.
The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature
Short comment: Every college student should read this book. It’s a modern classic.
Evolutionary Genetics
Short comment: Enough mathematical formalism to be technically illuminating, but not so much as to be opaque to the non-specialist.
Replenishing the Earth: The Settler Revolution and the Rise of the Angloworld, 1783-1939
Link to review: The Anglo Revolutions.
When Histories Collide: The Development and Impact of Individualistic Capitalism
Jacob’s Legacy: A Genetic View of Jewish History
Link to review: Jacob’s Legacy: A Genetic View of Jewish History.
The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization
Link to review: When the ancients were wise.
The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-Year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa, and Asia–and How It Died
Link to review: The view from somewhere smart.
The Next Christendom: The Coming of Global Christianity
Link to review: Next Christianity.
God’s Continent: Christianity, Islam, and Europe’s Religious Crisis
Link to review: God’s Contintent, Christianity, Islam and Europe’s Religious Crisis.
Why Some Like It Hot: Food, Genes, and Cultural Diversity
Link to review: Slow and diverse food.
Brotherhood of Kings: How International Relations Shaped the Ancient Near East
Link to review: Diplomacy among the aliens.
The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness
Link to review: The Price of Altruism.
The Imitation Factor: Evolution Beyond The Gene
Link to review: The wisdom of Seinfeld.
Evolution for Everyone: How Darwin’s Theory Can Change the Way We Think About Our Lives
Empires of the Word: A Language History of the World
Link to review: Empires of the Word & anti-Babel
The Tenth Parallel: Dispatches from the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam
Link to review: In the lands of the living God
Introduction to Quantitative Genetics & Genetics and Analysis of Quantitative Traits
Short comment: The book to the left is the quantitative genetics text you have to read if you aren’t a specialist. The book to the right is the reference to have if you are a specialist. The former is the Torah. The latter is the Talmud.
Population Genetics: A Concise Guide & Principles of Population Genetics
Short comment: The former is a good “soft landing” introduction to classical population genetics. The latter is the population genetics text. The Bible of population genetics, if you will. There may be useful supplementary commentaries, but this is the source text.
The Vikings: A History
Link to review: How the Swedes became white
Marketplace of the Gods: How Economics Explains Religion
Link to review: The dismal gods
Pandora’s Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization
Link to review: Pandora’s Seed: The Unforeseen Cost of Civilization
Descartes’ Baby: How The Science Of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human
Link to review: Inducing Disgust
A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind
Link to review: A History of Iran: Empire of the Mind
Empires of the Silk Road: A History of Central Eurasia from the Bronze Age to the Present
Link to review: Who’s the barbarian now? Empires of the Silk Road
Dragon Bone Hill: An Ice-Age Saga of Homo erectus
Link to review: Dragon’s Battles
Mother Nature: Maternal Instincts and How They Shape the Human Species
Link to review: Mother Nature: a complicated and morally ambivalent tale
The Robot’s Rebellion: Finding Meaning in the Age of Darwin
Link to review: The God of Reason
Empires and Barbarians: The Fall of Rome and the Birth of Europe
Link to review: Say it with me: Völkerwanderung
Shall the Religious Inherit the Earth?: Demography and Politics in the Twenty-First Century
Link to review: The wheel of history turns to the gods.
Historical Dynamics: Why States Rise and Fall
Link to review: Historical Dynamics and contingent conditions of religion
