Evolution & Genetics

Winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Guns, Germs and Steel examines the rise of civilization and the issues its development has raised throughout history....

In an age where technologies such as AI threaten to supplant human intelligence, an award-winning scientist offers a radical new view of our innate human technology and what we're truly capable of.

Alice Roberts takes you on the most incredible journey, revealing your path from a single cell to a complex embryo to a living, breathing, thinking person....

Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it....

In this landmark book of popular science, Daniel E. Lieberman gives us a lucid and engaging account of how the human body evolved over millions of years....

The Social Genome presents a nuanced, powerful perspective on individual potential and social dynamics and raises critical ethical questions about how we will navigate a future where we have access to far more genetic information than ever before.

Epigenetics is the science of living DNA, charting the chemical pathways that spur DNA into action by turning genes on and off. While the Human Genome Project of the early 2000s was hailed as the key to understanding human heredity and disease, that historic effort was just the beginning....

Breakthroughs in genetics present us with a promise and a predicament. The promise is that we will soon be able to treat and prevent a host of debilitating diseases. The predicament is that our newfound genetic knowledge may enable us to manipulate our nature....

Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world?...

A literally world-changing book, Darwin put forward the anti-religious and scientific idea that humans in fact evolved over millions of generations from animals....

The cheapest, simplest, most effective way of manipulating DNA ever known, CRISPR may well give us the cure to HIV, genetic diseases, and some cancers....

While plenty of entertaining books have been written about the history of alcohol and other intoxicants, none have offered a comprehensive, convincing answer to the basic question of why humans want to get high in the first place....

High in the Canadian Rockies is a small limestone quarry formed 530 million years ago called the Burgess Shale. It holds the remains of an ancient sea where dozens of strange creatures lived—a forgotten corner of evolution preserved in awesome detail....

The fascinating group of animals called dinosaurs became extinct some 65 million years ago (except for their feathered descendants). In their place evolved an enormous variety of land creatures, especially mammals, which in their way were every bit as remarkable as their Mesozoic cousins....

There's no one better qualified than Jared Diamond to explain the evolutionary forces that operated on our ancestors to make us sexually different. With wit and examples, he explains how our sexuality has been as crucial as our large brains and upright posture in our rise to human status....

With the trademark dramatic storytelling techniques of The Planets and The Universe, Andrew Cohen and Chris Packham narrate the biography of the Earth, revealing the most epic moments from its history, from the first seconds of its existence to the arrival of its most incredible inhabitants, us....

Drawing on insights from across the social, behavioral, and natural sciences, Michelle Baddeley explores contexts in which behavior is driven by the herd. She analyzes the rational vs nonrational and cognitive vs emotional forces and investigates why herding only sometimes works out well....

Are men born to cheat? Does monogamy serve women's interests? Wright unveils the genetic strategies behind everything from our sexual preferences to our office politics....

Do good guys finish last? Did we evolve to look out for number one? Are we bad by nature? At first glance, the theory of evolution seems to imply that all organisms are evolved to be selfish....

Brains Through Time examines how vertebrate nervous systems evolved in conjunction with other organ systems and the planet's ecology....

An exciting and accessible new view of the evolution of human and animal life on Earth. From the author of national bestseller, Your Inner Fish, this extraordinary journey of discovery spans centuries, as explorers and scientists seek to understand the origins....

Perpetually bored, anxious, fatigued, and overweight, modern society has failed to deliver the happiness it promised. The remedy, Jevan Pradas argues, is in a unique synthesis of a Paleolithic lifestyle and Buddhist meditation....

Can we trust our senses to tell us the truth? Challenging leading scientific theories that claim that our senses report back objective reality, cognitive scientist Donald Hoffman argues that while we should take our perceptions seriously, we should not take them literally....

New York Times best-selling author and 2018 Templeton Award nominee Gregg Braden crosses the traditional boundaries of science and spirituality to answer the timeless question at the core of our existence....

With acuity, humor, and respect for human diversity, The Shortest History of Sex reveals where the many facets of our sexuality—chemical, anatomical, behavioral, social—come from.

Why do people who have so much—leading comfortable lives filled with unprecedented freedom, choice, and abundance—often feel so unhappy and unfulfilled? This phenomenon is a defining paradox of our time and one we endlessly seek to solve. In The Social Paradox, psychologist William von Hippel argues that we need to think about this problem in a new way. By changing our perspective, we might finally see the solution, bringing us greater happiness and more satisfying relationships. The key is to understand the interplay between our two most basic psychological needs—for connection and autonomy.

Riley Black brings us back in time to prehistoric seas, swamps, forests, and savannas where critical moments in plant evolution unfolded. Each chapter stars plants and animals alike, underscoring how the interactions between species have helped shape the world we call home. As the chapters move upwards in time, Black guides listeners along the burgeoning trunk of the Tree of Life, stopping to appreciate branches of an evolutionary story that links the world we know with one we can only just perceive now through the silent stone, from ancient roots to the present.

Well-meaning physicians, parents, and even scientists today often spread misinformation about what biology can and can't tell us about our bodies, minds, and identities. In this accessible, myth-busting book, geneticist Shoumita Dasgupta draws on the latest science to correct common misconceptions about how much of our social identities are actually based in genetics.

A.I. or - Thinking outside the box! Mind Control is the first Owner's Manual that will help usher in a new species of human being, a species who will respect their home planet and put it first above all other priorities. I call him 'Homo Planetae' or Man of the Planet. Homo Sapiens or the Wise Man is no longer viable since it is this species that has brought us to the edge of extinction and the total destruction of this planet's habitat - something no other creature in history has been so careless and greedy to do. We did that.

In The Other Big Bang, the evolutionary and developmental biologist Eric S. Haag explores the two-billion-year history of sex, from the first organisms on Earth to contemporary humans.