100 books like The Naked Ape

Doctor Konner gives an intriguing anthropologist’s view of animal development, tracing the introduction of genders, illustrating examples of male and female dominance, and describing the impact of evolution on human behavior. While he gives many fascinating examples of normal and abnormal sex and gender behavior in the animal world, what interested me most was his coverage of the shift from millions of years as hunter/gatherers to today’s complex male-dominated society, with its attendant aggression.

One point made is that the very different male and female roles caused brain development variation which typically makes females more tuned to communication and cooperation. He suggests the salvation of human society ultimately requires a strong female role.

Our future is determined by us, and our actions are determined by our thought processes. In other words, the future of human society can be influenced by manipulating group thought. Colin applies years of training and experience as a hypnotist to give us a view of how the human brain functions and how it can be manipulated.

He views it as two computing systems. A subconscious mind performing 40 million tasks/second deals only in the present, ignoring abstract things like “yesterday,” “don’t,” etc. The second conscious mind uses 40 tasks/second to control and program the first. It doesn’t exist in babies and develops during childhood. How that growth is managed determines its adult thought process and ultimately group thought. Colin provides insights on how it can be manipulated for good or bad results.

Mentaligence takes conscious mind development one step further. It suggests that we are burdened with an indoctrination dictating how to behave and meet preordained goals pressed upon us by parents, teachers, religious leaders, and society in general. Its premise is that we must recognize these factors and any negative effect on our well-being; learn how to throw off their shackles; and develop a new attitude of thinking. In short, acquire what Dr. Lee calls mental agility.

Indoctrination, group-think, and social brain-washing are related terms for the negative force. While some indoctrination may be considered beneficial, few would disagree with the negative effect of Nazi group-think or that leading to mass suicides in Jamestown. They illustrate the need for objective thinking to all manifestations of indoctrination.

Despite the Covid pandemic, the two biggest threats to human society are political strife and degradation of its food supply through climate change and population explosion. Darren Qualman provides an easily understood discussion of the latter. He starts with the simple closed-loop plant/animal cycle powered by the sun’s energy, which existed up until about 300 years ago. Then, explains how the discovery of coal and oil, invention of the tractor, and development of a process to convert oil into fertilizer changed all that.

As a teenager, I was taught that the population explosion would cause mass starvation in the near future. Darren explains how force-feeding plants and domesticated animals, now using over 400 million tons of oil-based fertilizer each year, forestalled that. But combined with oil, gas, and coal burned today, human society is living with a time-bomb unless we learn to live with energy now available from the sun.

I was deeply captivated by Rutger Bregman’s book. In a world that often feels dark, this book was like a beam of light.

What resonated with me the most was how Bregman masterfully combines compelling stories with solid scientific research to argue that empathy and cooperation aren’t just societal constructs; they’re imprinted in our very nature.

His optimistic view of the human behavior was both surprising and reassuring at the same time. This book left me feeling hopeful not just for the present but for the future as well.

The author seeks to use evolutionary principles to explain why human violence within societies is uncommon whereas violence between societies, expressed mainly as war, is very common. Chimpanzees are a violent species in which both types of violence are extremely common. Males compete for dominance in violent ways and males frequently direct their violence toward females. But with respect to within-society violence humans have “domesticated” themselves, mostly by, over hundreds of thousands of years, killing the most violent and dangerous males. With respect to between-society violence, however, humans remain chimp-like. Chimps are notorious for intercommunity raiding and killing, and the anthropological and archaeological evidence shows that humans are equally notorious. Humans have therefore evolved to be both nice and nasty—and therein lies the paradox expressed in the book’s subtitle.

It’s no understatement to say that this book changed my life. I read it when I was living in London, and feeling very far from my rural, outdoorsy roots. Richard Mabey is considered one of Britain’s greatest living nature writers, and I think the label is absolutely accurate. In this book, he describes an episode of depression and how he slowly rediscovered a living connection with his surroundings.

This book showed me how literature can sometimes bring us closer to the natural world, helping us to articulate and explore our relationship with living things. It made me want to write!

Harari is better known by this book’s predecessor, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind. However, I enjoyed this book much more. Why? I study human evolution, so even though I enjoyed how the author summarized human history in Sapiens, starting from prehistoric African times, I realized that some ideas are based on wrong or dated information.

However, this book builds on the last portion of Sapiens, the future of humankind. I love speculative hard science fiction, especially those that combine human evolution with dystopian futures. So, of course, I enjoyed this “non-fiction” book.

I love this book because, in typical Paul Davies fashion, it approaches the fine-tuning issue from all perspectives, asks the big questions, and then, like a murder mystery, probes the most likely explanations. The book is a feast for the intellect.

While it describes many of the cosmos's most notable fine-tuning features, such as the strength of gravity, the value of the cosmological constant, and the smoothness of the cosmic background radiation, Paul Davies puts his own spin on the mysteries, examining them with the rigor of a scientist and a philosopher.

I also like this book because Davies shows care for the reader, filling the book with simple examples (such as synchronized ballerinas to illustrate the horizon problem) to explain a scientific conundrum and summarizing key points at the end of each chapter. Last, I appreciate the books of Paul Davies because, whether I agree or disagree with his… show more.

Barry Cunliffe is a celebrated British archaeologist who specializes in both Europe’s and Britain’s origins.

Admittedly, Barry gets into the weeds a bit which can be challenging for those just looking for an introduction, but what he does better than most is connect the dots that bind Europe, Asia, the Middle East and North Africa together.

Most histories of Europe pretend that Europe is an island, separate from Asia and everything else, as if it developed in a vacuum – but Barry reminds us that Charlemagne and Columbus are only part of the full European story.

Barry is a great place to start to understand the Eastern European, Asian, and Middle Eastern side of your British or Irish heritage – and yes, they are connected in some very direct ways.