Superb

Delightful work! As always Dr Sapolsky put in his vast and deep understanding of the subject into the book.

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Really interesting

I loved the depth and structure of the information as well as the writers ability to keep what could be quite dry very detailed material relevant and entertaining.

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Amazing book, would be better if Saplosky Narrated

Highly interesting and well written, tackling complex concepts in an easy to understand way, but for me the narration is so irritating. Sapolsky is an incredible scientific communicator and has an engaging voice so I don’t understand why they got someone else to do the audiobook.

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Excellent

If you are person falling on a science enthusiasts spectrum this a must read. Excellent!!

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Did Hitler have free will (and other stuff)?

I have spent some thing thinking about how to review this book. It's long and complex but well narrated and packed with Sapolsky quips and mirth at times when the going gets really tough e.g the ghastly section on game theory to explain facets of altruism that makes you head for the fast-forward button.
On the other hand how do you justice to a subject so wide-ranging and complex and limit the word count to less than 10000 pages? So there are always areas that are lacking, missed or over emphasised and in any popular science book there will always be opinion, the whole thing about free will perhaps being one unncessary distraction.
Sapolsky starts off with his dream about what he might do to Hitler in his violent fantasy and I was sort of disappointed he didn't return to this at the end. As what he concluded was Hitler was not "evil" but a product of his genes, environment and experiences, In essence a broken machine and perhaps if he had been born in the 80s he may have been just been another art dealer known for his fits of rage and rants about immigrants when you visit him in his in his run-down gallery. Perhaps he may have joined an obscure right wing nationalist group, perhaps not, but the point was that Hitler's behaviour was not totally irrational but a product of his traits, personality, upbringing (the brutal father) and experiences that shaped his behaviour. Did Hitler then have free will or could the Homunculus as coined by Sapolsky have reined his worst impulses such as his sadistic pleasure in watching plotters against him dangle on the end of piano wire. But as explained in the excellent last chapter War and Peace where he draws extensively on the work of Steven Pinker this is not that unsusual for the human race. Didn't the citizens of Rome enjoy the slaughter in the collesseum? The one thing this book makes you do is think so 5 stars for that. Overall a fascinating book and he clearly hammers home the point that the effect of genes, hormones and behaviours need to be seen in context-the human being is a super complex organism. He does not address how beliefs affect human behaviour and trys to stay well away from religion which seems to be a sensitive topic for him. In contrast this subject was superbly handled well by Yuval Harari in Sapiens. And I don't think Sapolsky really does a great job on explaining how society can mould human behaviour although this attempted when he covers issues such as honour killing.. The Nazis really understood that one well in creation of the youth organisations in Nazi Germany (Hitler youth etc) and took on board the teachings of Aristotle who said “Give me a child until he is 7 and I will show you the man.”
So in a nutshell is this a good book, yes? Is the science good, generally yes. Do i agree with everything he says, no. Are there loose ends absolutely. But overall this book deserves to be on your book shelf and needs to be read or listened to aka Audible (preferably several times).

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Explains a lot… but it’s complicated

Easy to follow dialogue, well organised chapters tie the material together and Robert Sapolsky delivers plenty of his signature follow up analogy’s to keep things interesting.

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Awesome, just awesome.

Of course all this is very obvious but it's nice to have someone confirm it through scientific research. every lawmaker should read this book or at least be whacked in the head by it.

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Engaging and full of information

A really interesting insight into why we do what we do. Demonstrating the impact of our makeup and the context in which we act.

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Fascinatingly Insightful

Robert Sapolsky is a humerus genius in pulling together an incredible amount of studies to demonstrate what we understand of how our biology creates / influences our behaviour. I loved every minute of this book!

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Breathtaking

This book has altered my worldview - It fascinatingly reveals the mechanisms underlying real world phenomena

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