Ebook Behave The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst Robert M Sapolsky Books
Download As PDF : Behave The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst Robert M Sapolsky Books
The New York Times bestseller
“It’s no exaggeration to say that Behave is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read.” —David P. Barash, The Wall Street Journal
"It has my vote for science book of the year.” —Parul Sehgal, The New York Times
"Hands-down one of the best books I’ve read in years. I loved it." —Dina Temple-Raston, The Washington Post
Named a Best Book of the Year by The Washington Post and The Wall Street Journal
From the celebrated neurobiologist and primatologist, a landmark, genre-defining examination of human behavior, both good and bad, and an answer to the question Why do we do the things we do?
Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic he starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy.
And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. A behavior occurs--whether an example of humans at our best, worst, or somewhere in between. What went on in a person's brain a second before the behavior happened? Then Sapolsky pulls out to a slightly larger field of vision, a little earlier in time What sight, sound, or smell caused the nervous system to produce that behavior? And then, what hormones acted hours to days earlier to change how responsive that individual is to the stimuli that triggered the nervous system? By now he has increased our field of vision so that we are thinking about neurobiology and the sensory world of our environment and endocrinology in trying to explain what happened.
Sapolsky keeps going How was that behavior influenced by structural changes in the nervous system over the preceding months, by that person's adolescence, childhood, fetal life, and then back to his or her genetic makeup? Finally, he expands the view to encompass factors larger than one individual. How did culture shape that individual's group, what ecological factors millennia old formed that culture? And on and on, back to evolutionary factors millions of years old.
The result is one of the most dazzling tours d'horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted, a majestic synthesis that harvests cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines to provide a subtle and nuanced perspective on why we ultimately do the things we do...for good and for ill. Sapolsky builds on this understanding to wrestle with some of our deepest and thorniest questions relating to tribalism and xenophobia, hierarchy and competition, morality and free will, and war and peace. Wise, humane, often very funny, Behave is a towering achievement, powerfully humanizing, and downright heroic in its own right.
Ebook Behave The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst Robert M Sapolsky Books
"This book describes the neurological processes of the brain. Most interesting was the numerous times that one's brain chemistry is doing something other than what you think you are thinking. For example you know that you are not prejudiced against the "other" but your brain knows better.
For me a difficult read. Lots of unfamiliar terms and territory. The wonderful jokes and anecdotes greatly lightened the load. Their inclusion in uber-small type was a disappointment.
The basic message is "it depends." Nature , nurture, early childhood experience (including abuse), and peer pressure all have an impact on behavior. There is no "silver bullet" that explains individual behavior.
This is a scholarly work. The pop culture rewrite probably would run 200 pages without the plumbing and wiring diagrams. The frequent recaps and summaries help keep on on track.
A final irony. We are told that the human brain doesn't reach maturity until the mid-twenties. Many of the cited studies were carried out with students as subjects. Are we studying immature brains?"
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Behave The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst Robert M Sapolsky Books Reviews :
Behave The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst Robert M Sapolsky Books Reviews
- There are many excellent works that explain how we make the decisions we make. Sapolsky tells us why we make them. This book is a must read for anyone interested in why we make decisions that often times seem inexplicable. More importantly, it provides a foundation for changing our social systems in ways that will be far more efficient and productive. I didn't get through the introduction before my first aha moment. He has taken complex science and presented it so it is understandable and enjoyable to read. The downside of reading Sapolsky's latest work is it will cause you to question long held beliefs about guilt or innocence, good and evil, moral or immoral. It is a ride worth taking and will leave you wanting more.
- The newest on brain science by the world wide expert, Robert Sapolsky. After watching a class taught by him on Great Courses, my husband and I felt he was a leading expert in his field. He also can hold an audience, keeping you interested by inserting anecdotes into what can sometimes be an overwhelming amount of scientific information. In this book, you will learn how much your "subconscious" runs your life. You will see that sometimes why you did something is caused by a butterfly effect that started months ago. You will have a much greater understanding of people and why they do what they do. So worth reading. Amazing achievement, this book, this author, deserves your attention. He's on the cutting edge of our growing base of brain science.
- This book describes the neurological processes of the brain. Most interesting was the numerous times that one's brain chemistry is doing something other than what you think you are thinking. For example you know that you are not prejudiced against the "other" but your brain knows better.
For me a difficult read. Lots of unfamiliar terms and territory. The wonderful jokes and anecdotes greatly lightened the load. Their inclusion in uber-small type was a disappointment.
The basic message is "it depends." Nature , nurture, early childhood experience (including abuse), and peer pressure all have an impact on behavior. There is no "silver bullet" that explains individual behavior.
This is a scholarly work. The pop culture rewrite probably would run 200 pages without the plumbing and wiring diagrams. The frequent recaps and summaries help keep on on track.
A final irony. We are told that the human brain doesn't reach maturity until the mid-twenties. Many of the cited studies were carried out with students as subjects. Are we studying immature brains? - Please read this book!
We are capable of both far worse than we want to believe and can do more to change the world for the better than we tend to think we're able; and in both cases it's because of things we don't know, can't explain or don't want to control. But the more we try to expand the tiny sliver of knowledge we do have, with respect for how small that sliver is; and the more awareness we can have that the world around us and our biology drive much more of what we do in any moment than our conscious intellect, emotions or "free will" do - the more hope we have of doing more to change the world with the little bit of actual influence we possess.
There is infinitely more that we'll never know than any of us ever can know. Life, and even more so we as humans, are complicated beyond comprehension. Many times over this book made that abundantly clear. More often than not, those lessons made me question the certainty of what I believe (or thought I knew as fact) about me, people, relationships, politics, economics, race, religion, God, culture, civilization, war, peace and any other slice of life I can think of.
Robert Sapolsky, with humility and great respect for the limitations of science, has written a truly world view changing book that is as well written as the science he has aggregated is fascinating and eye-opening. He artfully conveys meaningful, relevant understanding and context for the hopelessly complex topic of what drives human behavior. A review that led me to this book described it as one of the best works of non-fiction the reviewer had read, and it is hands down the same for me. It is also likely to prove one of the most meaningful and important books I ever will read because of how fundamentally it has me re-thinking, well, everything.
