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

01

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 evolution and human nature with The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation.

02

The Selfish Gene

Richard Dawkins · Science

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

Shares cooperation and evolution with The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation.

03

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

Jonathan Haidt · Psychology

The Righteous Mind is Jonathan Haidt's argument that moral reasoning is not the source of our moral judgments — it's the press secretary for them.

A kindred science read.

04

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.

05

The Elephant in the Brain: Hidden Motives in Everyday Life

Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson · Psychology

Kevin Simler and Robin Hanson argue that human behavior is much more self-interested and much less high-minded than the explanations people give for it.

Both dig into evolution.

06

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.

Shares evolution and morality with The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation.

07

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

Matt Ridley · Science

Matt Ridley's central argument is that the nature versus nurture debate has been framed wrong for over a century.

Shares evolution and human nature with The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation.

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 evolution and human nature with The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation.

09

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 evolution and human nature with The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation.

10

The God Delusion

Richard Dawkins · Religion & Spirituality

The God Delusion is Richard Dawkins' comprehensive case against religious belief, published in 2006 as the most high-profile work of the New Atheist movement.

Shares evolution and morality with The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation.

11

The Lessons of History

Will & Ariel Durant · History

The Lessons of History is the Durants' distillation of their eleven-volume The Story of Civilization — a project that consumed forty years — into a slim, hundred-page essay.

Shares human nature and morality with The Origins of Virtue: Human Instincts and the Evolution of Cooperation.

12

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.