Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

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Health, Fitness & Dieting

Sapolsky, Robert M.

Psychology & Counseling

Vintage

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.

Politics & Social Sciences

Social Sciences

Penguin??Books

Dust jacket worn, page edges tanned. Shipped from the U.K. All orders received before 3pm sent that weekday.

A Primate's Memoir (A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons)

Science & Math

Biological Sciences

Scribner

This fascinating collection of essays exposes us as the animals that we are while explaining behaviours that are deeply and recognisably human. The first section, 'Our Genes and Who We Are', focuses on our genetic endowment and the forces it creates in our lives, such as our need to seek out beauty. Another essay explains the invisible genetic warfare that takes place between men and women as they conceive a baby, which continues as the foetus develops. The second part of the book, 'Our Bodies and Who We Are', ponders such diverse topics as why dreams are in fact dream-like; why we are sexually attracted to one another; why Alzheimer's disease tends to be a post-menopausal phenomenon; and why grandmothers buying groceries for their grandchildren are part of nature's Darwinian logic. In the third section, 'Society and Who We Are', Sapolsky takes his interdisciplinary curiosity out into the wilds of civilization and poses such interesting questions as when and why our preferences in food become fixed. Or, why do desert cultures tend to be monotheistic and sexually repressed whereas rainforest dwellers tend towards sexually-relaxed polytheistic cultures, and why do people from the lower economic classes have more health problems? In each of these investigations, we see Sapolsky's brilliant mind synthesising a wealth of research in a thoughtful, engaging way that satisfyingly reveals the enormous complexity of simply being a human animal.

Monkeyluv: And Other Lessons in Our Lives as Animals

Honorable Mention in the category of Biological Sciences, 1992 Professional/Scholarly Publishing Annual Awards Competition presented by the Association of American Publishers, Inc. Looking beyond the now widely recognized relationships between stress and physical illness, this accessible and engagingly written book suggests that stress and stress-related hormones can also endanger the brain. Strategies to reduce stress and methods to protect neurons from further damage are proposed, and the relevance for humans of the animal research findings are clearly delineated. Sapolsky provides an extensive review of the recent, exciting data on glucocorticoids, the adrenal steroid hormones (hydrocortisone or cortisol in humans) that are released during stress. Excessive exposure to these hormones can damage the brain and make neurons more vulnerable to neurological insults. The findings he reports and ideas he synthesizes may have profound implications for understanding brain aging and resistance of the brain to the damaging effects of strokes, seizures, and possibly Alzheimer's disease. In part I Sapolsky focuses on how the failure of glucocorticoid regulation and subsequent excessive secretion combine to cause a complex cascade of degeneration in the brain during aging. In part 11 he addresses the implications of glucocorticoid neurotoxicity for neurology. Each chapter includes a helpful summary of the major points discussed as well as a capsule review of information from the previous chapters. Robert M. Sapolsky is Associate Professor of Biology and Neuroscience at Stanford University. He is also Research Associate at the Institute for Primate Research, National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi, and a MacArthur Fellow.

Stress, the Aging Brain, and the Mechanisms of Neuron Death

Medical Books

Medicine

Bradford Books

Discusses the health concerns related to cigarettes, dairy and meat products, salt, artificial sweeteners, tampons, and home insulation, and looks at how the public's perception of risk is influenced

Consuming Fears

Basic Books

Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will

One of our great behavioral scientists, the bestselling author of Behave, plumbs the depths of the science and philosophy of decision-making to mount a devastating case against free will, an argument with profound consequences. Robert Sapolsky's Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: we may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at base of human behavior, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there's some separate self telling our biology what to do. Determined offers a marvelous synthesis of what we know about how consciousness works--the tight weave between reason and emotion, and between stimulus and response, in the moment and over a life.&nbsp;One by one, Sapolsky tackles all the major arguments for free will and takes them out, cutting a path through the thickets of chaos and complexity science and quantum physics, as well as touching ground on some of the wilder shores of philosophy. He shows us that the history of medicine is in no small part the history of learning that fewer and fewer things are somebody's "fault"; for example, for centuries we thought seizures were a sign of demonic possession. Yet as he acknowledges, it's very hard, and at times impossible, to uncouple from our zeal to judge others, and to judge ourselves. Sapolsky applies the new understanding of life beyond free will to some of our most essential questions around punishment, morality, and living well together. By the end, Sapolsky argues that while living our daily lives recognizing that we have no free will is going to be monumentally difficult, doing so is not going to result in anarchy, pointlessness and existential malaise.&nbsp;Instead, it will make for a much more humane world.

Philosophy

Penguin Press

The instant New York Times bestseller "Excellent...Outstanding for its breadth of research, the liveliness of the writing, and the depth of humanity it conveys." - Wall Street Journal One of our great behavioral scientists, the bestselling author of Behave, plumbs the depths of the science and philosophy of decision-making to mount a devastating case against free will, an argument with profound consequences Robert Sapolsky's Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do. Determined offers a marvelous synthesis of what we know about how consciousness works--the tight weave between reason and emotion and between stimulus and response in the moment and over a life. One by one, Sapolsky tackles all the major arguments for free will and takes them out, cutting a path through the thickets of chaos and complexity science and quantum physics, as well as touching ground on some of the wilder shores of philosophy. He shows us that the history of medicine is in no small part the history of learning that fewer and fewer things are somebody's "fault"; for example, for centuries we thought seizures were a sign of demonic possession. Yet, as he acknowledges, it's very hard, and at times impossible, to uncouple from our zeal to judge others and to judge ourselves. Sapolsky applies the new understanding of life beyond free will to some of our most essential questions around punishment, morality, and living well together. By the end, Sapolsky argues that while living our daily lives recognizing that we have no free will is going to be monumentally difficult, doing so is not going to result in anarchy, pointlessness, and existential malaise. Instead, it will make for a much more humane world.

The Trouble With Testosterone: And Other Essays On The Biology Of The Human Predicament

Covering such broad topics as science, politics, history, and nature, the author of Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers writes accessible and interesting essays that explore the human struggle with moral and ethical problems in today's world. 20,000 first printing.

The TROUBLE WITH TESTOSTERONE: And Other Essays on the Biology of the Human Predicament

Literature & Fiction

History & Criticism

Finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize From the man who Oliver Sacks hailed as “one of the best scientist/writers of our time,” a collection of sharply observed, uproariously funny essays on the biology of human culture and behavior. In the tradition of Stephen Jay Gould and Oliver Sacks, Robert Sapolsky offers a sparkling and erudite collection of essays about science, the world, and our relation to both. “The Trouble with Testosterone” explores the influence of that notorious hormone on male aggression. “Curious George’s Pharmacy” reexamines recent exciting claims that wild primates know how to medicate themselves with forest plants. “Junk Food Monkeys” relates the adventures of a troop of baboons who stumble upon a tourist garbage dump. And “Circling the Blanket for God” examines the neurobiological roots underlying religious belief. Drawing on his career as an evolutionary biologist and neurobiologist, Robert Sapolsky writes about the natural world vividly and insightfully. With candor, humor, and rich observations, these essays marry cutting-edge science with humanity, illuminating the interconnectedness of the world’s inhabitants with skill and flair.

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

Books by Sapolsky, Robert M.

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

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

A Primate's Memoir (A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons)

Monkeyluv: And Other Lessons in Our Lives as Animals

Stress, the Aging Brain, and the Mechanisms of Neuron Death

Consuming Fears

Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will

Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will

The TROUBLE WITH TESTOSTERONE: And Other Essays on the Biology of the Human Predicament

The Trouble With Testosterone: And Other Essays On The Biology Of The Human Predicament