Why am I passionate about this?

A philosophy professor, my central interest has always been something historical: what is going on in this strange modern world we live in? Addressing this required forty years of background work in the natural sciences, history, social sciences, and the variety of contemporary philosophical theories that try to put them all together. In the process, I taught philosophy courses on philosophical topics, social theory, and the sciences, wrote books, and produced video courses, mostly focused on that central interest. The books listed are some of my favorites to read and to teach. They are crucial steps on the journey to understand who we are in this unprecedented modern world.


I wrote

The Emergence of Value: Human Norms in a Natural World

By Larry Cahoone,

Book cover of The Emergence of Value: Human Norms in a Natural World

What is my book about?

It shows that a broad enough understanding of nature can incorporate human nature without reducing it to inhuman processes. Nature…

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The books I picked & why

Book cover of Plough, Sword and Book: The Structure of Human History

Larry Cahoone Why did I love this book?

I love this unique book. Written by a philosopher who was equally an anthropologist, it presents a bird’s eye view of the structure of human history. This is not a subject most scholars have the knowledge or the courage to tackle!

Gellner has both. He paints a picture of the three eras of human history that is hard to deny, in the process analyzing the core logic of each era for the people who lived in it. This sets the stage for understanding what a new kind of world we live in today. Gellner also had a wicked sense of humor. The book opens students’ eyes – I taught it as often as I could.

By Ernest Gellner,

Why should I read it?

1 author picked Plough, Sword and Book as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

"Philosophical anthropology on the grandest scale. . . .Gellner has produced a sharp challenge to his colleagues and a thrilling book for the non-specialist. Deductive history on this scale cannot be proved right or wrong, but this is Gellner writing, incisive, iconoclastic, witty and expert. His scenario compels our attention."—Adam Kuper, New Statesman

"A thoughtful and lively meditation upon probably the greatest transformation in human history, upon the difficult problems it poses and the scant resources it has left us to solve them."—Charles Larmore, New Republic


Book cover of The Gap: The Science of What Separates Us from Other Animals

Larry Cahoone Why did I love this book?

This is the best single book summarizing contemporary scientific knowledge on what makes humans different from other animals. It strikes a middle path between “romantics” who want to believe dolphins and primates can do everything we can and “killjoys” who try to maintain more traditional notions of human superiority.

But if there is a “gap” between us and other animals, exactly what is it? Suddendorf tracks the question from one field of possible answers to the next, from linguistics to anthropology to archaeology to primatology to cognitive science.

The book reads like a detective story – I couldn’t put it down.

By Thomas Suddendorf,

Why should I read it?

2 authors picked The Gap as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

There exists an undeniable chasm between the capacities of humans and those of animals. Our minds have spawned civilizations and technologies that have changed the face of the Earth, whereas even our closest animal relatives sit unobtrusively in their dwindling habitats. Yet despite longstanding debates, the nature of this apparent gap has remained unclear. What exactly is the difference between our minds and theirs?In The Gap , psychologist Thomas Suddendorf provides a definitive account of the mental qualities that separate humans from other animals, as well as how these differences arose. Drawing on two decades of research on apes, children,…


Book cover of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

Larry Cahoone Why did I love this book?

This is the now classic work on why “advanced” civilization developed in some places and not others in human history. It remains a controversial issue.

A psychologist, ecologist, and geographer with a background in field study in New Guinea, Diamond makes a strong argument that there are environmental reasons for these differences. Ranging across all the continents and thousands of years of human history, I found it hard to put down and even harder to understand how Diamond can work in so many fields at once!

Some do not like this daring book. But nobody has surpassed it yet. 

By Jared Diamond,

Why should I read it?

17 authors picked Guns, Germs, and Steel as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

Why did Eurasians conquer, displace, or decimate Native Americans, Australians, and Africans, instead of the reverse? In this "artful, informative, and delightful" (William H. McNeill, New York Review of Books) book, a classic of our time, evolutionary biologist Jared Diamond dismantles racist theories of human history by revealing the environmental factors actually responsible for its broadest patterns.

The story begins 13,000 years ago, when Stone Age hunter-gatherers constituted the entire human population. Around that time, the developmental paths of human societies on different continents began to diverge greatly. Early domestication of wild plants and animals in the Fertile Crescent, China,…


Book cover of The Homeless Mind: Modernization and Consciousness

Larry Cahoone Why did I love this book?

I have taught many books on “modernity” or the modern world. This is the one single volume I would pick for students on a deserted island. I love reading it and love teaching it.

Berger applies the most important parts of social theory in a readable way to analyze what it’s like to work, love, and live in a modern versus traditional society. He shows how modernization permanently generates “discontents.” We love it, and we hate it, and most of the critics of modernity can’t help being modern themselves.

There is a chapter on dueling, which students never forget! 

By Peter L. Berger, Brigitte Berger, Hansfried Kellner

Why should I read it?

1 author picked The Homeless Mind as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

The authors seek to explain the social nature of the processes of modernization and the hegemony of ideas and ways of thinking that constitute the modern outlook.


Book cover of The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

Larry Cahoone Why did I love this book?

Best recent book examining human morality from a scientific, psychological point of view.

Darwinians used to think humans had to be selfish and immoral. Contemporary evolution argues the opposite, that humans evolved moral limits on our selfishness in order to live together. Haidt’s is the best book presenting this new evolutionary psychology.

But it goes further to connect those scientific issues with contemporary politics, explaining why people from “red” and “blue” states cannot understand each other: they each embody a short list of human moral values, but different ones. This is a great book for thinking carefully about human morality and contemporary politics. Students love it, and so do I. 

By Jonathan Haidt,

Why should I read it?

16 authors picked The Righteous Mind as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.

What is this book about?

'A landmark contribution to humanity's understanding of itself' The New York Times

Why can it sometimes feel as though half the population is living in a different moral universe? Why do ideas such as 'fairness' and 'freedom' mean such different things to different people? Why is it so hard to see things from another viewpoint? Why do we come to blows over politics and religion?

Jonathan Haidt reveals that we often find it hard to get along because our minds are hardwired to be moralistic, judgemental and self-righteous. He explores how morality evolved to enable us to form communities, and…


Explore my book 😀

The Emergence of Value: Human Norms in a Natural World

By Larry Cahoone,

Book cover of The Emergence of Value: Human Norms in a Natural World

What is my book about?

It shows that a broad enough understanding of nature can incorporate human nature without reducing it to inhuman processes. Nature includes values as well as facts, and we are naturally cultural. So human uniqueness is compatible with the natural sciences, as it must be. To see this, we must employ multiple sciences and recent philosophical traditions, charting their impact on our norms of truth, morality, justice, and beauty.

Book cover of Plough, Sword and Book: The Structure of Human History
Book cover of The Gap: The Science of What Separates Us from Other Animals
Book cover of Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies

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American Flygirl

By Susan Tate Ankeny,

Book cover of American Flygirl

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Susan Tate Ankeny Author Of The Girl and the Bombardier: A True Story of Resistance and Rescue in Nazi-Occupied France

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Why am I passionate about this?

Susan Tate Ankeny left a career in teaching to write the story of her father’s escape from Nazi-occupied France. In 2011, after being led on his path through France by the same Resistance fighters who guided him in 1944, she felt inspired to tell the story of these brave French patriots, especially the 17-year-old- girl who risked her own life to save her father’s. Susan is a member of the 8th Air Force Historical Society, the Air Force Escape and Evasion Society, and the Association des Sauveteurs d’Aviateurs Alliés. 

Susan's book list on women during WW2

What is my book about?

The first and only full-length biography of Hazel Ying Lee, an unrecognized pioneer and unsung World War II hero who fought for a country that actively discriminated against her gender, race, and ambition.

This unique hidden figure defied countless stereotypes to become the first Asian American woman in United States history to earn a pilot's license, and the first female Asian American pilot to fly for the military.

Her achievements, passionate drive, and resistance in the face of oppression as a daughter of Chinese immigrants and a female aviator changed the course of history. Now the remarkable story of a…

American Flygirl

By Susan Tate Ankeny,

What is this book about?

One of WWII’s most uniquely hidden figures, Hazel Ying Lee was the first Asian American woman to earn a pilot’s license, join the WASPs, and fly for the United States military amid widespread anti-Asian sentiment and policies.

Her singular story of patriotism, barrier breaking, and fearless sacrifice is told for the first time in full for readers of The Women with Silver Wings by Katherine Sharp Landdeck, A Woman of No Importance by Sonia Purnell, The Last Boat Out of Shanghai by Helen Zia, Facing the Mountain by Daniel James Brown and all Asian American, women’s and WWII history books.…


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