Showing titles in Evolution & Genetics

Tucked away in Siberia, there are furry, four-legged creatures with wagging tails and floppy ears that are as docile and friendly as any lapdog. But, despite appearances, these are not dogs - they are foxes. They are the result of the most astonishing experiment in breeding ever undertaken - imagine speeding up thousands of years of evolution into a few decades. In 1959, biologists Dmitri Belyaev and Lyudmila Trut set out to do just that, by starting with a few dozen silver foxes from fox farms in the USSR and attempting to recreate the evolution of wolves into dogs in real time.

'Brilliant .. I cannot recommend this book strongly enough' - Henry Marsh, New Statesman (about The Idea of the Brain) A new gene editing technology, invented just seven years ago, has turned humanity into gods. Enabling us to manipulate the genes in virtually any organism with exquisite...

How four tools enabled humanity to control its destiny What enabled us to go from simple stone tools to smartphones? How did bands of hunter-gatherers evolve into multinational empires? Listeners of Sapiens will say a cognitive revolution - a dramatic evolutionary change that altered our brains, turning primitive humans into modern ones - caused a cultural explosion. In Transcendence, Gaia Vince argues instead that modern humans are the product of a nuanced coevolution of our genes, environment, and culture that goes back into deep time.

More than any other modern scientists, Stephen Jay Gould has opened up to millions the wonders of evolutionary biology. His genius as an essayist lies in his unmatched ability to use his knowledge of the world, including popular culture, to illuminate the realm of science.

In this startling study of human emotion, Dacher Keltner investigates an unanswered question of human evolution: If humans are hardwired to lead lives that are "nasty, brutish, and short," why have we evolved with positive emotions like gratitude, amusement, awe, and compassion that promote ethical action and cooperative societies? Born to Be Good takes us on a journey through scientific discovery, personal narrative, and Eastern philosophy.

In this updated edition of The Lie: Unraveling the Myth of Evolution/Millions of Years, Ken Ham exposes how the acceptance of evolution and millions of years has eroded belief in God as Creator. This issue is crucial to understanding modern worldview dilemmas, including gender and sexuality, abortion, racism, and the mass exodus from the church.

Humans are the only mammals to walk on two, rather than four, legs. From an evolutionary perspective, this is an illogical development, as it slows us down. But here we are, suggesting there must have been something tremendous to gain from bipedalism. First Steps takes our ordinary, everyday...

In this engaging exploration, archaeologist Ian Hodder departs from the two prevailing modes of thought about human evolution: the older idea of constant advancement toward a civilized ideal and the newer one of a directionless process of natural selection. Instead, he proposes a theory of human evolution and history based on "entanglement," the ever-increasing mutual dependency between humans and things. 

How did human minds become so different from those of other animals? What accounts for our capacity to understand the way the physical world works, to think ourselves into the minds of others, to gossip, read, tell stories about the past, and imagine the future? These questions are not new: they have been debated by philosophers, psychologists, anthropologists, evolutionists, and neurobiologists over the course of centuries. One explanation widely accepted today is that humans have special cognitive instincts.

Anna Blix takes the listener on a personal, investigative, and deeply fascinating journey through each of the 40 weeks in a human pregnancy. Parallelly, for each week, we meet other creatures who have just delivered their next generation into the world. The bacteria E. coli has multiplied by two within 20 minutes. An Eastern grey kangaroo is pregnant for just 5 weeks before giving birth to a baby the size of a bean, which then crawls into its pouch to grow. 

Biogeography is the study of geographic variation in all characteristics of life - ranging from genetic, morphological, and behavioral variation among regional populations of a species, to geographic trends in diversity of entire communities across our planet's surface. From the ancient hunters and gatherers to the earliest naturalists, Charles Darwin, Alfred Russel Wallace, and scientists today, the search for patterns in life has provided insights that proved invaluable for understanding the natural world. 

In this extraordinary follow-up to the critically acclaimed The Lucifer Principle, Howard Bloom - one of today's preeminent thinkers - offers us a bold rewrite of the evolutionary saga. Global Brain is more than just a brilliantly original contribution to the ongoing debate on the inner workings of evolution; it is a "grand vision," says the eminent evolutionary biologist David Sloan Wilson, a work that transforms our very view of who we are and why.

This audiobook is narrated by an AI Voice. 'A remarkable achievement' - Stephen Fry In 2015 #thedress captured the world's imagination. Was the dress in the picture white and gold or blue and black? It inspired the author to ask: if people in the same time and place can see the same thing...

From the #1 New York Times bestselling author of Hidden Valley Road comes the heart-wrenching journey of a family facing an unthinkable destiny, whose flawed genetic code might hold the long-sought key to a cure for dementia. “A gripping real-life horror story of dementia, love and grief...

The scientist who has been dubbed the “Father of Intelligent Design” and author of the groundbreaking book Darwin’s Black Box contends that recent scientific discoveries further disprove Darwinism and strengthen the case for an intelligent creator. In his controversial bestseller...

Journey back 200 million years to witness the epic evolution and catastrophic extinction of prehistoric apex predators. Perfect for a captivating daily commute or an afternoon of lifelong learning, this vivid paleontology adventure transforms ancient fossils into a roaring, high-energy nature...

Charles Darwin's foremost biographer, Janet Browne, delivers a vivid and accessible introduction to the book that permanently altered our understanding of what it is to be human. A sensation on its publication in 1859, The Origin of the Species profoundly shocked Victorian readers by calling into question the belief in a Creator with its description of evolution through natural selection. And Darwin's seminal work is nearly as controversial today.

With acuity, humor, and respect for human diversity, The Shortest History of Sex reveals where the many facets of our sexuality—chemical, anatomical, behavioral, social—come from. Chasing down our evolutionary family tree, from the first aquatic creatures to primate societies, David Baker sheds light on our baffling array of passions, impulses, and fetishes, and guides us toward a clear understanding of one of the deepest, most abiding forces of human nature.

Homo sapiens emerged as a species about 200,000 years ago and soon—with fire, simple tools, and an egalitarian social system—we inhabited every continent. But now our infinitely elaborated tools and our highly non-egalitarian social system threaten sustainability. Many at the bottom lose the desire to live, committing suicide or succumbing to drugs, alcohol, and obesity. What is Health? explains from the bottom up—molecules to society—how we reached this point.

As biologist Jeremy Griffith explains in The Interview (which psychiatrist Professor Harry Prosen described as the most important interview of all time), while we humans lacked the explanation for our 2-million-year corrupted human condition we had no choice but to deny that our distant ape ancestors lived in a state of cooperative and loving innocence.