Behave

integrative thinking, on par with similar authoritative works, such as Jared Diamond s Guns, Germs, and Steel and Steven Pinker s The Better Angels of Our Nature. Michael Shermer, American Scholar

Behave is the best detective story ever written, and the most important. If you've ever wondered why someone did something good or bad, vicious or generous you need to read this book. If you think you already know why people behave as they do, you need to read this book. In other words, everybody needs to read it. It should be available on prescription (side effects: chronic laughter; highly addictive). They should put Behave in hotel rooms instead of the Bible: the world would be a much better, wiser place   Kate Fox, author of Watching the English

Magisterial . . . This extraordinary survey of the science of human behaviour takes the reader on an epic journey . . . Sapolsky makes the book consistently entertaining, with an infectious excitement at the puzzles he explains . . . a miraculous synthesis of scholarly domains. Steven Poole, The Guardian

Rarely does an almost 800-page book keep my attention from start to finish, but if anyone can save evolutionary biology from TED talkers and pop-science fabulists, it might be Sapolsky . . . . Behave ranges at great length from moral philosophy to social science, genetics to Sapolsky s home turf of neurons and hormones but all of it is aimed squarely at the question of why humans are so awful to each other, and whether the condition is terminal. Vulture

Robert Sapolsky's students must love him. In Behave, the primatologist, neurologist and science communicator writes like a teacher: witty, erudite and passionate about clear communication. You feel like a lucky auditor in a fast-paced undergraduate course, where the implications of fascinating scientific findings are illuminated through topical stories and pop-culture allusions. Nature 

Sapolsky s book shows in exquisite detail how culture, context and learning shape everything our genes, brains, hormones and neurons do. Times Literary Supplement

Behave is like a great historical novel, with excellent prose and encyclopedic detail. It traces the most important story that can ever be told. Edward O. Wilson

Truly all-encompassing . . . detailed, accessible, fascinating. The Telegraph

A wide-ranging, learned survey of all the making-us-tick things that, for better or worse, define us as human . . . . An exemplary work of popular science, challenging but accessible. Kirkus Reviews, starred

[Sapolsky] weaves science storytelling with humor . . . . [His] big ideas deserve a wide audience and will likely shape thinking for some time. Publishers Weekly (starred review)

[Sapolsky] does an excellent job of bringing together the expansive literature of thousands of fascinating studies with clarity and humor . . . . A tour-de-force. Library Journal (starred review)

Sapolsky finds not the high moral drama of the soul choosing good or evil but rather down-to-earth biology . . . a remarkably encyclopedic survey of the sciences illuminating human conduct.
Booklist(starred review)

Read Robert Sapolsky s marvelous book Behave and you ll never again be surprised by the range and depth of our own bad behavior. We all carry the potential for unconscious biases, to be damaged by our childhoods and map that damage onto our own loved ones, and to form the tribal Us groups that treat outsiders as lesser Thems.  But to read this book is also, marvelously, to be given the hope that we have much more control of those behaviors than we think. And Behave gives us more than hope it gives us the knowledge of how to act on that aspiration, to manifest more of our best selves and less of our worst, individually and as a society. That s very good news indeed.   Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit and Smarter Faster Better

"As wide as it is deep, this book is colorful, electrifying, and moving. Sapolsky leverages his deep expertise to ask the most fundamental questions about being human from acts of hate to acts of love, from our compulsion to dehumanize to our capacity to rehumanize." David Eagleman, PhD, neuroscientist at Stanford, author, presenter of PBS's The Brain
 
"Behave is a beautifully crafted work about the biology of morality. Sapolsky makes multiple passes at the target, using different time scales and systems. He shows you how all the perspectives and systems connect, and he makes you laugh and marvel along the way. Sapolsky is not just a leading primatologist; he s a great writer and a superb guide to human nature." Jonathan Haidt, New York University, author of The Righteous Mind

This is a miraculous book, by far the best treatment of violence, aggression, and competition ever.  It ranges from how neurons and hormones interact, how emotions are an essential part of decision making, why adolescents are more likely to be violent than adults, why genes influence cultures and vice-versa, and the ins and outs of we versus them, all the way to live and let live truces in World War I and the My Lai massacre. Its depth and breadth of scholarship are amazing, building on Sapolsky s own research and his vast knowledge of the neurobiology, genetic, and behavioral literature. For instance, Behave includes fair evaluations of complex debates (like over sociobiology) that I was involved in, and tackles controversial questions such as whether our hunter-gatherer ancestors warred on each other. He even takes on free will with a clarity usually absent from the writings of philosophers on the subject. All this is done brilliantly with a light and funny touch that shows why Sapolsky is recognized as one of the greatest teachers in science today. Paul R. Ehrlich, author of Human Natures