Armed with extraordinary new discoveries about our genes, acclaimed science writer Matt Ridley turns his attention to the nature-versus-nurture debate in a thoughtful book about the roots of human behavior.\nRidley recounts the hundred years' war between the partisans of nature and nurture to explain how this paradoxical creature, the human being, can be simultaneously free-willed and motivated by instinct and culture. With the decoding of the human genome, we now know that genes not only predetermine the broad structure of the brain, they also absorb formative experiences, react to social cues, and even run memory. They are consequences as well as causes of the will.

Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience & What Makes Us Human (Author Signed)

Science & Math

RIDLEY, Matt

Evolution

Harpercollins

Armed with extraordinary new discoveries about our genes, acclaimed science writer Matt Ridley turns his attention to the nature-versus-nurture debate in a thoughtful book about the roots of human behavior.
Ridley recounts the hundred years' war between the partisans of nature and nurture to explain how this paradoxical creature, the human being, can be simultaneously free-willed and motivated by instinct and culture. With the decoding of the human genome, we now know that genes not only predetermine the broad structure of the brain, they also absorb formative experiences, react to social cues, and even run memory. They are consequences as well as causes of the will.

The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture

Politics & Social Sciences

Anthropology

HarperCollins Publishers Canada, Limited

Paperback. Pub Date :2011-06-10 Pages: 160 Language: English Publisher: Atlas Books Acclaimed author Matt Ridley traces the colourful life of the man who discovered the structure of DNA. the building blocks of life.Building on a biographical tradition that can be traced back to Aubreys Brief Lives. Dr Johnsons Lives of the Poets and Lytton Stracheys Eminent Victorians. this exciting and ground-breaking new series pairs great biographers. historians and novelists with iconic subjects. the writing bristling with original and distinctive points of view . On 28 February 1953. Francis Crick walked into the Eagle pub in Cambridge and announced that he and his American colleague James Watson had found the secret of life. In fact. they had indeed done so. That morning. Crick and Watson had worked out the structure of DNA (deoxyribonucleic acid). They had discovered its double helix ...

Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code. Matt Ridley (Eminent Lives)

Biographies & Memoirs

Professionals & Academics

Harper-perennial

Title: The Rational Optimist( How Prosperity Evolves) Binding: Hardcover Author: MattRidley Publisher: HarperTorch

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

Harper

Title: The Rational Optimist( How Prosperity Evolves) Binding: Paperback Author: MattRidley Publisher: HarperPerennial

Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

Business & Money

Economics

Fourth Estate

“Ridley writes with panache, wit, and humor and displays remarkable ingenuity in finding ways to present complicated materials for the lay reader.” — Los Angeles Times In a bold and provocative interpretation of economic history, Matt Ridley, the New York Times-bestselling author of Genome and The Red Queen, makes the case for an economics of hope, arguing that the benefits of commerce, technology, innovation, and change—what Ridley calls cultural evolution—will inevitably increase human prosperity. Fans of the works of Jared Diamond (Guns, Germs, and Steel), Niall Ferguson (The Ascent of Money), and Thomas Friedman (The World Is Flat) will find much to ponder and enjoy in The Rational Optimist.

The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge

We are taught that the world is a top-down place. Acclaimed author Matt Ridley shows just how wrong this is in his compelling new book.
We are taught that the world is a top-down place. Generals win battles; politicians run countries; scientists discover truths; artists create genres; inventors make breakthroughs; teachers shape minds; philosophers change minds; priests teach morality; businessmen lead businesses; environmentalists save the planet. Not just individuals, but institutions too: Goldman Sachs, the Communist Party, the Catholic Church, al Qaeda – these are said to shape the world.
This is more often wrong than right. ‘The Evolution of Everything’ is about bottom-up order and its enemy, the top-down twitch, the endless fascination human beings have for design rather than evolution, for direction rather than emergence. Top-downery is the source of most of our worst problems in the past – why Hitler won an election, why the sub-prime bubble happened, why Africa lingered in poverty when Asia did not, why the euro is a disaster – and will be the scourge of this century too.
And although we neglect, defy and ignore them, bottom-up trends still shape the world. The growth of technology, the sanitation-driven health revolution, the quadrupling of farm yields so that more land could be released for nature – these were largely emergent phenomena. So were the internet, the mobile-phone revolution and the rise of Asia.
In this wide-ranging, highly opinionated non-fiction narrative, Ridley draws on anecdotes from science, economics, history, politics and philosophy and examples drawn from the scientific literature, from historical narratives and from personal anecdotes.

History

Historical Study & Educational Resources

1st Fourth Estate 2004 trade edition paperback new In stock shipped from our UK warehouse

Genome : The Autobiography of a Species

‘Ridley is spot-on when it comes to the vital ingredients for success’ Sir James Dyson\nBuilding on his bestseller The Rational Optimist, Matt Ridley chronicles the history of innovation, and how we need to change our thinking on the subject. 
Innovation is the main event of the modern age, the reason we experience both dramatic improvements in our living standards and unsettling changes in our society. It is innovation that will shape the twenty-first century. Yet innovation remains a mysterious process, poorly understood by policy makers and businessmen alike. 
Matt Ridley argues that we need to see innovation as an incremental, bottom-up, fortuitous process that happens as a direct result of the human habit of exchange, rather than an orderly, top-down process developing according to a plan. Innovation is crucially different from invention, because it is the turning of inventions into things of practical and affordable use to people. It speeds up in some sectors and slows down in others. It is always a collective, collaborative phenomenon, involving trial and error, not a matter of lonely genius. It still cannot be modelled properly by economists, but it can easily be discouraged by politicians. Far from there being too much innovation, we may be on the brink of an innovation famine. 
Ridley derives these and other lessons from the lively stories of scores of innovations – from steam engines to search engines – how they started and why they succeeded or failed.

How Innovation Works

4th Estate - GB

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by RIDLEY, Matt. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Books by RIDLEY, Matt

See the best price to sell, buy, or rent books by RIDLEY, Matt. BookScouter helps to compare book prices from 25+ online bookstores and 30+ buyback vendors with a single search.

Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience & What Makes Us Human (Author Signed)

The Agile Gene: How Nature Turns on Nurture

Francis Crick: Discoverer of the Genetic Code. Matt Ridley (Eminent Lives)

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves

The Evolution of Everything: How Ideas Emerge

Genome : The Autobiography of a Species

How Innovation Works

How Innovation Works