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1
Kindred: Neanderthal Life, Love, Death and Art
by Rebecca Wragg Sykes -
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Evolution's Bite: A Story of Teeth, Diet, and Human Origins
by Peter Ungar -
3
Paleofantasy: What Evolution Really Tells Us about Sex, Diet, and How We Live
by Marlene Zuk -
4
Tales Teeth Tell: Development, Evolution, Behavior
by Tanya M. Smith -
5
Our Human Story
by Chris Stringer & Louise Humphrey
The best books on Anthropology, recommended by Brenna Hassett
The best books on Anthropology, recommended by Brenna Hassett
New techniques have uncovered an enormous amount of information about how humans evolved and new human species continue to pop up on a regular basis. Biological anthropologist Brenna Hassett, author of Growing Up Human, recommends books to learn more about our ancestors and how we became the human beings we are today.
The best books on Capitalism and Human Nature, recommended by Robert J Shiller
“You have to understand people first before you can understand how to devise an economic system for them” argues Robert J Shiller, the Yale economics professor and Nobel laureate. He chooses five books that explore who we fundamentally are, as human beings, and how that will determine the shape of a successful capitalism.
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1
The Selfish Gene
by Richard Dawkins -
2
Not by Genes Alone: How Culture Transformed Human Evolution
by Peter J. Richerson & Robert Boyd -
3
Guns, Germs and Steel
by Jared Diamond -
4
The Creation of Inequality: How Our Prehistoric Ancestors Set the Stage for Monarchy, Slavery, and Empire
by Joyce Marcus & Kent Flannery -
5
The Cultural Origins of Human Cognition
by Michael Tomasello
The best books on Cultural Evolution, recommended by Joseph Henrich
The best books on Cultural Evolution, recommended by Joseph Henrich
What role did culture play in human evolution? Why did human brains get so big so quickly? When and why did inequality first emerge in human society? Harvard professor and author Joe Henrich picks some of the best books for understanding ‘cultural evolution.’
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Pricing the Priceless Child: The Changing Social Value of Children
by Viviana A Zelizer -
2
Social Development
by H. Rudolph Schaffer -
3
The Roads of Chinese Childhood
by Charles Stafford -
4
The Child in the City
by Colin Ward -
5
The Spirit Level: Why Greater Equality Makes Societies Stronger
by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett
The best books on Children, recommended by Jo Boyden
The best books on Children, recommended by Jo Boyden
We all know how children should be brought up, and rarely question the cultural norms that underly that certainty. But what does that mean for the policies we try to impose on the developing world? Jo Boyden, professor of international development at Oxford University and director of its Young Lives study, picks books that question our assumptions about how to successfully raise a child.
The best books on Virtual Living, recommended by Aleks Krotoski
‘There was a research study done in the 1960s that identified that people will open themselves up to a stranger on a train and tell them deep personal information they would never tell their closest friends, partially because they have this sense that they can confess.’
The best books on Evolution and Human Cooperation, recommended by Paul Seabright
Think of Darwinian natural selection and you may think of selfish or competitive behaviour, but this is far from the whole story, says economist Paul Seabright.
The best books on Immortality, recommended by Stephen Cave
Will it be possible to live forever? Is there such a thing as the soul, or immortality in one’s legacy? Stephen Cave, philosopher and author of Immortality: The Quest to Live Forever and How It Drives Civilization, explores the eternal questions, from elixirs of life to modern-day cryonics.
The best books on Native Americans and Colonisers, recommended by Colin Calloway
There’s a lot more to the story of colonists and Native Americans than the tale of the first Thanksgiving taught in school, says history professor Colin Calloway.
The best books on Prehistory, recommended by Tim White
Paleoanthropologist Tim White tells us about his work investigating the origins of homo sapiens and explains what a 4.4 million-year-old skeleton he found in Africa tells us about our common past.
The best books on Archaeology, recommended by Neal Ascherson
The journalist, author and editor of the journal Public Archaeology, explains why the history of archaeology is a surprisingly bloody affair – 80% of the Polish archaeological profession died one way or another during WW2
The best books on African Religion and Witchcraft, recommended by Jean Fontaine
The emeritus professor of social anthropology at the London School of Economics and author of Speak of the Devil says the Dinka and the Nuer are famous in anthropology for not being preoccupied with misfortune