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THE NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER
WINNER OF THE 2017 LA TIMES BOOK PRIZE FOR SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY
‘Awe-inspiring… You’ll learn more about human nature than in some other book I will be able to recall to mind’ Henry Marsh
‘One of the most best scientist-writers of our time’ Oliver Sacks
Why do human beings behave as they do?
We are able to savage acts of violence but in addition spectacular feats of kindness: is one side of our nature destined to win out over the other?
Every act of human behaviour has a couple of layers of causation, spiralling back seconds, minutes, hours, days, months, years, even centuries, right back to the daybreak of time and the origins of our species.
In the epic sweep of history, how does our biology have an effect on the arc of war and peace, justice and persecution? How have our brains evolved alongside our cultures?
This is the exhilarating story of human morality and the science underpinning the biggest question of all: what makes us human?
