The best underappreciated but eminently readable books that tell us who we are

How did my ancestry help define me? My great-grandfather created a dairy farm outside of Tacoma, and my mother grew up impoverished in Indiana during the Great Depression. These experiences shaped my family, but how far into the past do such influences arise?

I have been fascinated by history and genealogy since childhood, and even my professional role as a paleoanthropologist is an extension of that interest in prehistory. Christine Kenneally addresses in direct language the implicit questions I was seeking–what roles did genes, ancestry, and history play in shaping me and the populations around me? It is not hard for me to identify with the values of the Puritan farmers from whom I descended, but before I read this book, I didn’t appreciate the persistence of historical experiences in shaping a community. For example, the slave trade instilled a modern community's suspicion of strangers in the worst affected areas of West Africa. Village-level differences in antisemitism during the Middle Ages reappeared in Nazi Germany.

It is common now to have our genomes sequenced to better know where we came from (I did), but Kenneally explains the limitations of what that can tell us. History, on the other hand, is neither dead nor irrelevant.

I have tried to appreciate linguistics before but never really succeeded until I stumbled across this book. For one thing, it is a difficult field if you haven’t learned a second language. (I tried but not successfully.) For another, when I have delved into language theory, it has been much easier to think about, oh, what I am going to have for dinner tonight, or the fact that my library book is due tomorrow, or almost anything else. Guy Deutscher’s narrative is refreshingly different.

Of the traits that make humans different from all animals on this planet, language is certainly near the top of the list. As an evolutionist, language is important to me for two reasons. The first is that its origin is both important and mysterious. The French Academy of Sciences famously banned discussion of the first question because it was useless speculation and wasted time. That problem is still unsolved. The second is that an appreciation of how language evolves through time was one of the first clues that the social and physical world in which we live is ever-changing.

Deutscher addresses this second point, the continuing change in our languages. He clearly raises and answers the question of where grammatical constructions and new words come from and why innovation is inevitable. Whether or not you want to keep up with the latest jargon your kids are using or to swear at the inescapable profanity around us, at least now we can appreciate why we have to deal with it.

After reading David Hackett’s book, I cannot think of American society in the same way again. The United States is touted as the great melting pot, but we all know that cultural nuggets may refuse to mix thoroughly with the rest. What I learned from this book is that even within white Angle-America, behavior patterns that differentiated Englishmen hundreds of years ago persist in America today. This book is not about red states and blue states, but it is impossible to read it and not see the connections.

Hackett traces the colonial immigration of four populations who settled the colonies–New England Puritans, Quakers and others of the Middle Colonies, Cavaliers of the South, and the Scotch-Irish of the Appalachian back-country. They differed significantly in geographic origins, speech, architecture, family structure and values, gender roles, food, dress, work patterns, and the concept of freedom.

Those differences are still with us and contribute to the rising sectionalism we see today. Which parts of the country have produced the most influential political leaders, successful generals, and intellectual thinkers? If you or your neighbors are white Anglo-Americans, how do you fit into this pattern? How much do you value unity versus individualism? Strong government versus personal freedom? Success within the system or outside it? Social responsibility versus personal responsibility? These answers are not in the book. But you will find yourself asking the questions over and over.

This is a fascinating book that gives clarity to a difficult topic: how does our brain make decisions? I taught neuroscience before I retired, and I understand that when the semester turns to the cerebrum, details fade into vague and general statements. I confess to cribbing lecture notes from Sapolsky’s popular book because he explains things much more effectively than any textbook. Of course, our behaviors are influenced by immediate circumstances and by past experiences. And, yes, ancestral genetic patterns and molecular dynamics within the neurons also play a role. But so does something as simple as fatigue–and we all know that making lots of decisions can be exhausting and leave us as much in need of food and rest as digging a ditch. Now, I can justify an afternoon nap even if I have only been working at my desk all morning.

Richard Sapolsky is known for his popular science writing, which informs and makes important points about our society. In this book, he uses the latest science to make sense of dominance, tribalism, sex and reproduction, empathy and antipathy, morals, and metaphors. Our choices are not predetermined, but sometimes, free will faces quite a hurdle to enable us to do the right thing.

This book is less about who we are than how we relate to nature. It is important for all of us to be reminded periodically that humans are only actors in a much larger and more powerful environment that operates beyond our control. Many books have been written in the past 50 years about the next pandemic, and David Quammen’s account of how diseases spread from animals to humans is one of the best. For me, it puts the daily feed of political bickering and distant violence in a refreshing perspective, mixed with a level of invigorating nervousness. 

Experiences with HIV and SARS should have taught us how vulnerable we are to new diseases. The 2014-2016 Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which killed over 14,000 people, demonstrated how irrational and self-destructive we can behave when fear takes grip. Why, then, were we so unprepared, either medically or psychologically, to face the recent coronavirus pandemic? How could so many political leaders deny its danger even as it killed over a million Americans and millions more outside our borders? Quammen’s book should remind us that even as COVID transforms into memories, we can tell our grandchildren the next pandemic can appear at any time.