Showing titles in Evolution

NATIONAL BESTSELLER NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER Renowned activist and public intellectual David Graeber teams up with professor of comparative archaeology David Wengrow to deliver a trailblazing account of human history, challenging our most fundamental assumptions about social evolution--from the...

If you are at all interested in life on our planet, then you need to know about insects. They are the most successful group of animals ever to have lived on Earth. Making up three quarters of all animal species, insects conquered the planet long ago. They were among the very first animals to appear on land and were the first to take to the air. Their total biomass is at least 10 times that of all humans and our livestock combined.

Longlisted for the National Book Award for Nonfiction and A New York Times Notable Book of 2018. Our understanding of the ‘tree of life’, with powerful implications for human genetics, human health and our own human nature, has recently completely changed. This book is about a new method of...

First published in 1871, The Descent of Man, and Selection in Relation to Sex sees Darwin apply his evolutionary theory to the human race, controversially placing apes in our family tree. The book covers a range of adjacent themes, including differences between different peoples, the dominance of women in mate choice, and the relevance of evolutionary theory to general society.

In this landmark book of popular science, Daniel E. Lieberman—chair of the department of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University and a leader in the field—gives us a lucid and engaging account of how the human body evolved over millions of years, even as it shows how the increasing...

Brought to you by Penguin. A mind-expanding, revolutionary journey across time that shows how our biology has determined human history for the first time. This book will change how you see the world. We’re a wonder of evolution, capable of incredible feats. But we’re also deeply flawed. Our...

Sleep has hardly changed since Paleolithic humans snoozed soundly in their caves. While sabre-toothed tigers were their biggest night-time worry, today it’s stress and social media that keep us awake, but the solutions are the same, and sleep therapist Dr Merijn van de Laar offers...

In Origins, Frank H. T. Rhodes explores the origin and evolution of living things, the changing environments in which they have developed, and the challenges we now face on an increasingly crowded and polluted planet. Rhodes argues that the future well-being of our burgeoning population depends in no small part on our understanding of life's past, its long and slow development, and its intricate interdependencies.

This audiobook narrated by Katherine Fenton gives a sweeping account of male nurturing, explaining how and why men are biologically transformed when they care for babies.

Bloomsbury presents How to Fly: Taking Wing with Birds, Bats, Insects and humans, written and read by Simon Barnes. A unique and all-encompassing exploration of the wonders of flight and the way different species have evolved different solutions to the problem of defying gravity – including...

Bloomsbury presents The Genetic Book of the Dead, written and read by Richard Dawkins. From one of the world’s great science writers, a book that explores the deepest principles of evolutionary history. In this groundbreaking new approach to the evolution of all life, Richard Dawkins shows how...

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. Drunk elegantly cuts through the tangle of urban legends and anecdotal impressions that surround our notions of intoxication to provide the first rigorous, scientifically grounded explanation for our love of alcohol.

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 of life's immense diversity...

Since the publication in 1859 of Charles Darwin's remarkable On the Origin of Species, the modern science of biology and genetics has added surprising new dimensions to evolutionary theory. In this course, you’ll discover what Darwin didn’t know, covering much of the curriculum of an introductory college course in evolutionary biology. No background in science is needed to follow these engaging lectures, delivered by Professor Scott Solomon of Rice University, a gifted teacher and widely traveled field biologist.

In the summer of 2022, Lee Berger lost 50 pounds in order to wriggle though impossibly small openings in the Rising Star cave complex in South Africa—spaces where his team has been unearthing the remains of Homo naledi, a proto-human likely to have coexisted with Homo sapiens some 250,000 years ago. Lead researcher Berger had never made his way into the dark, cramped, dangerous underground spaces where many of the naledi fossils had been found. Now he was ready to do so. Once inside the cave, Berger made shocking new discoveries that expand our understanding of this early hominid.

The follow-up to the BBC Radio 4 Book of the Week Other Minds A Times and Sunday Times Book of the Year A Waterstones Best Book of 2020 The scuba-diving philosopher explores the origins of animal consciousness. Dip below the ocean’s surface and you are soon confronted by forms of life that...

Can there be freedom and free will in a deterministic world? Renowned philosopher Daniel Dennett emphatically answers "yes!" Using an array of provocative formulations, Dennett sets out to show how we alone among the animals have evolved minds that give us free will and morality. Weaving a richly detailed narrative, Dennett explains in a series of strikingly original arguments - drawing upon evolutionary biology, cognitive neuroscience, economics, and philosophy - that far from being an enemy of traditional explorations of freedom, morality, and meaning, the evolutionary perspective can be an indispensable ally.

World renowned scientist Carl Sagan and acclaimed author Ann Druyan have written a Roots for the human species, a lucid and riveting account of how humans got to be the way we are. It shows with humor and drama that many of our key traits - self-awareness, technology, family ties, submission to authority, hatred for those a little different from ourselves, reason, and ethics - are rooted in the deep past, and illuminated by our kinship with other animals.

A leading neuroscientist offers a history of the evolution of the brain from unicellular organisms to the complexity of animals and human beings today Renowned neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux digs into the natural history of life on earth to provide a new perspective on the similarities between us...

New updated and expanded edition of the groundbreaking book that ignited a firestorm in the scientific world with its radical approach to evolution Explains how past forms and behaviors of organisms determine those of similar organisms in the present through morphic resonance Reveals the...