Books like The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature

01

The Selfish Gene

Richard Dawkins · Science

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

Shares evolution and genetics with The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature.

02

The Blind Watchmaker

Richard Dawkins · Science

The Blind Watchmaker is Richard Dawkins's argument that natural selection — cumulative, non-random selection acting on random variation — is sufficient to explain the apparent design in biological organisms.

Both dig into evolution.

03

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 evolution and human nature with The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature.

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

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 Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature.

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 evolution and genetics with The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature.

08

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 evolution and genetics with The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature.

09

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 Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature.

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 evolution and human nature with The Red Queen: Sex and the Evolution of Human Nature.

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.