Books like Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human

01

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Robert M. Sapolsky · Science

Behave is Robert Sapolsky's attempt to explain why humans do what they do — the violence, the altruism, the tribalism, the heroism — by working through every layer of biology that contributes to a single act.

Both dig into evolution.

02

The Selfish Gene

Richard Dawkins · Science

The Selfish Gene reframes evolution from the organism's point of view to the gene's.

Shares genetics and evolution with Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human.

03

Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind

Yuval Noah Harari · History

Sapiens traces the full arc of human history from the emergence of Homo sapiens in Africa roughly 70,000 years ago to the present.

Both dig into evolution.

04

The Gene: An Intimate History

Siddhartha Mukherjee · Science

The Gene is Siddhartha Mukherjee's account of the gene — what it is, how it was discovered, and what humanity has done and might yet do with that knowledge.

Shares genetics and evolution with Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human.

05

Outliers: The Story of Success

Malcolm Gladwell · Psychology

Outliers is Malcolm Gladwell's argument that exceptional success is less a product of individual genius or drive than it is of hidden advantages, timing, and accumulated opportunity.

A kindred science read.

06

The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature

Matt Ridley · Science

The Red Queen takes its title from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass, where the Red Queen tells Alice she must keep running just to stay in the same place.

Shares genetics and human nature with Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human.

07

The Extended Phenotype

Richard Dawkins · Science

The Extended Phenotype is Richard Dawkins's most technical and, by his own account, most important book.

Shares genetics and evolution with Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human.

08

The Language Instinct

Steven Pinker · Science

The Language Instinct is Steven Pinker's argument that language is not a cultural invention but a biological instinct — a specialized module in the human brain that evolved by natural selection, much as the eye evolved to see or the hand evolved to grasp.

Shares human nature and evolution with Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human.

09

The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation

Matt Ridley · Science

The Origins of Virtue begins from a puzzle: humans cooperate extensively with non-relatives, a behavior that seems to contradict the logic of natural selection, which predicts that organisms should act in the interests of their genes and close kin.

Shares human nature and evolution with Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human.

10

Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain

Lisa Feldman Barrett · Psychology

Lisa Feldman Barrett wrote this short book — genuinely short at under thirty thousand words — as an accessible introduction to seven core findings of modern neuroscience, each presented as a lesson that overturns something most people believe.

Shares human nature and evolution with Nature via Nurture: Genes, Experience, and What Makes Us Human.

11

A Crack in Creation: Gene Editing and the Unthinkable Power to Control Evolution

Jennifer A. Doudna and Samuel H. Sternberg · Science

A Crack in Creation is Jennifer Doudna and Samuel Sternberg's account of how CRISPR-Cas9 works, what it can do, and why its possibilities should give everyone pause.

Both dig into evolution.

12

A Short History of Nearly Everything

Bill Bryson · Science

A Short History of Nearly Everything is Bill Bryson's attempt to understand the scientific story of everything — from the Big Bang to the emergence of modern humans — by spending three years talking to scientists and reading science history.

Both dig into evolution.