A careful examination of studies where biology intersects with behavior, both in humans and in other species. An argument for careful thinking and for tolerating each other into being better humans ( )

Monumental book. It definitely opened up new mental doors for me.

It is rare to find such a generous book these days.

For being non-fiction the thread is clear and captivating. You peel each layer of behavior (from the brain signals all the way to your culture). The last few chapters, the author makes observations and social commentary with strong ideas.
The one that struck me the most is that after understanding how much all the biological factors play into our behavior (you have to read the book), do we still have free will? is it still fair to shame and guilt-trip people for their shortfalls? The whole notion of “punishment” is re-examined and questioned. ( )

I got lost in the neuroscience but understand the genes versus the environment debate and am all the more puzzled about free will. ( )

With Robert Sapolsky you are never far from the outlandish and funny asides he makes on the place of humans in the animal kingdom.

In one footnote he ponders the origins and progress of goodwill as he sits on the john at a Starbucks waiting for the barista to bring him a fresh roll of toilet paper.

I can’t remember a comparable book which so ably itemizes that which affects human behaviour. From genetics and epigenetics, to gene expression, the role of life in the womb, evolution, how the brain shares tasks between lobes, how neutrons, synapses, and chemistry affect thought, the huge role that hormones play, to the sociology of hunter-gatherers and early farmers.

For all our research of the brain and the mind, though, science has thus far provided this means to predict the best and the worst in human behaviour. And it is clearly the worst in human behaviour that troubles Sapolsky the most.

I did not know before reading this book the extent of honour killings in society; that between 5,000 and 20,000 honour killings are perpetrated on mostly young woman and children around the globe every year. They are largely perpetrated by male relatives, and they are not just perpetrated in the far reaches of Asia. They happen in our own backyards. (I somehow knew this last point, but conveniently hid it away.)

It is no secret to Sapolsky that it is not the unequal distribution of wealth that builds resentment in our communities as much as the way we treat each other under these conditions.

Nor is it much of a secret that the one of the fastest ways to rectify imbalances in society is to improve educational opportunities for the poor.

Humans created poverty. It exists nowhere else in the animal kingdom.

Only humans commit genocide. Only humans characterize other humans as cockroaches or other low vermin.

And yet it is also only humans who can sometimes take the lead and inspire societies to greater levels of understanding and better the lives of the downtrodden. Think of Martin Luther King, Jr., anti-slavery activist William Wilberforce, Nelson Mandela, and Mahatma Gandhi. ( )

What makes us act the way we do? Well, it’s complicated.

Exceptional in range and detail, Robert Sapolsky takes readers through a cross-disciplinary scientific study of human behavior. He explains how culture, context and learning shape how our genes, neurons and hormones are expressed and why free will is a lie that we tell ourselves.

I listened to the audiobook but plan on purchasing a copy for my Kindle so I can make highlights and notes. There is so much great information, there’s no way to retain it without taking notes or reading it a few times. Fantastic listen. Cannot wait to read again. ( )

This is second on my all time list behind Kahneman. This thing is huge, it's as close to a comprehensive multi-field discussion of human behavior I've seen, and it manages to stay coherent, well structured, and compelling throughout.

This book goes from the basic structure and biology of neurons, the brain, neurotransmitters and hormones, genetic elements of behavior, epigenetics, development of the brain and behavior from early in pregnancy through adolescence and how negative events (malnutrition, abuse, neglect) alter that development, a pretty damn in depth discussion of evolution and the various selection processes in play from survival of the individual to close family to the species as a whole, and how social structures and culture influence behavior just to lay the groundwork for how much goes into any single decision.

The second part starts to look into behavior closer to directly through the lens of research by psychology. It starts with in-group bias, with solid coverage of how researchers have manipulated whether people feel someone is an us or a them. Next is peer pressure. Excellent coverage of Milgram's electric shock work and the Stanford Prison Experiment. Really there's a lot here and touching on every subject in depth. What I will say is that the psychology, which is the material I'm most familiar with, is presented masterfully, engaging, does a good job of being clear on what the research does and doesn't say, and consistently refers back to the groundwork in the first part of the book.

There is a third part where he discusses what we should take away from all of this, and he loses me a bit at points in the discussion of the justice system. I'm not entirely sure what he's trying to say. But he comes back strong with discussions of how to work past large scale conflict including war and even genocide, then the overall message that we can use our understanding of context to frame things in ways that allow us to be better to the people around us and drive positive change. Overall with some very minor hiccups, he manages to keep a consistent thread throughout this absolutely insanely broad work. He doesn't just skim through topics. There's a solid level of depth throughout. The organization is excellent. To the best of my ability to determine, it's one of the best sourced books I've read. He does all this while keeping a light, not too serious tone and throwing in mild wit and wordplay in a way that adds to the level of engagement.


If that's not enough, the appendices are great too.
( )

A bit repetitive but a tour de force in biology. ( )

Truly a fine book! So much to learn here about behavior, specifics and generalities, and most importantly, how they fit together. A lot of humor (not all of it sophisticated) and storytelling. This is a long book, and I spent a really long time reading it. Well worth taking it in by small chunks. ( )

Describes human behavior starting from molecular biology, to brain structure across the animal kingdom, brain modules in mammals and primates, to individual people, and even up to groups and their culture. He backs his explanations with studies, many which track brain activation and people or animals make economic choices or react to us-them situations. Some themes: 1) Reporting / popular belief get many things wrong. For example, higher levels of testosterone doesn't make men more aggressive, instead is makes make who are aggression prone more aggressive, but makes timid men more timid. 2) Genes don't make people more aggressive (or more anything), instead all genes need an environmental trigger to bring about a result. You can't ask, what does this gene do, instead you have to ask, what does this gene do in this environment? His analogy: you can't ask what does width do to a rectangle's area, the question only makes sense when height is also considered. 3) The brain's fast system makes us vs them identifications that the slow, rational prefrontal cortex and sometimes override. He explains how it evolved, how our brains process these decisions like other primates, how the fast decisions can be modified by context, and how that might help groups get interact more positively.

The casual voice, is a little odd, but makes the book a bit easier to read. ( )

This book truly deserves the high rating it has.

It's extensive yet approachable, very well written and even moving at points, while still very much staying on topic. For the first time in a while, a nonfiction book where the author inserted some personal anecdotes that didn't subtract from the enjoyment of the book and actually brought more to the table (as opposed to being thinly veiled attempts to boost the ego of the man behind the words.)

As someone who's knowledge on neurology is based on high school biology, I also greatly appreciated the appendices. This is definitely a book I'll re-read at some point. ( )

good to understand human body ( )

Flott bók og vel þess virði að lesa fyrir alla sem fýsir að vita meir um innri virkni hugans, hvað veldur ákvörðunartökum okkar og virkjar okkar bestu og verstu hvatir. Við erum í raun þrælar uppeldis og gena og ekki kæmi til ytri aðstæður t.d. í barnsæsku sem kveikja á mismunandi triggerum fyirr lífstíð.
Fróðleg lesning en átti oft erfitt með að ná samhenginu í líffræðiheitunum á ensku sem voru ítrekuð skammstöfuð. ( )

For some reason I assumed this was going to be a book neurons and brains but it is really much broader and rich than I expected: it takes multiple angles to explain behavior, acting at different time-scales and either lowering or raising thresholds. The book is also narrower in the sense that it focuses on human social behavior as opposed to individual behavior. The goal of the book seems to be connecting a bunch of experimental or observational results from neuroscience, genetics, anthropology, etc., to how we behave toward one another as individuals, or as groups.

The good things:

The book avoids single cause explanations and instead conveys how different causes on different timescales interact. The book’s organization reflects these multiple causes by dedicating the initial chapters to the nervous system, hormones, childhood, culture, genetics, up to human and primate evolution. The part on hormones was very interesting to me because he explores more fully the roles of Testosterone and Oxytocin and in short, experiments seem to contradict common knowledge or common perceptions. The interaction of hormones and the brain are some of the more interesting early parts of the book because they are one of the more clear-cut examples of multiple interacting causes and make it worth getting through the first chapter. The roles and effects of stress hormones are also quite interesting and very relevant to how you live your life. Later chapters on applications will keep coming back to this overall structure. A lot of these factors have effects conditional on the other factors, not directly. It turns out Robert Sapolsky specializes on the interactions between hormones and the nervous system, which may explain why especially those chapters are so good, and it seems he has written at length previously about several of these topics individually.

He gives an overview of some pretty intriguing ideas and points you to approachable books that develop them more fully. E.g. 1) Several social animal species show elements of empathy, of a code of ethics, and of moral outrage and punishment. 2) There is a strange physiological overlap in the brain between literal disgust and moral disgust and this may affect our ability to reason about morality effectively 3) How humans and other animals share behaviors like group hierarchies and group membership, but we seem to have pluggable definitions of what it means to be dominant (lifting the biggest rock, or most charismatic public speaker) or part of a group (a tribe, a state with hundreds of millions of people, a football team fan) 4) Making a distinction between empathy and compassion, and how when taken literally empathy may backfire.

Last but not least, he takes time to add nuance and present limitations of a lot of work he describes. He may describe a brain imaging study, a twin study, or a behavioral economics experiment and then present some competing explanations. Or, he may explain limitations or common over-interpretations. Sometimes he will offer subsequent variations that help sort out some of the questions you may have. For example, he spends some time on the pitfalls of twin-studies; he describes some of the problems of trying to estimate violence before sedentarism and agriculture; he continually reminds you how easy it is to confuse correlation with causality in brain imaging studies. The most interesting studies to me are when a causal intervention was done, such as temporarily disabling/enabling some hormone or disabling some part of the brain. He’ll let you know about this and distinguish this from other types of studies. Presenting these nuances contributes to the book’s hefty look both because there is a point/counterpoint section, and also around a hundred pages of bibliographic references. I get the feeling I cannot possibly remember a lot of the individual facts, but I feel learned a bunch just from seeing him explore the strengths and weaknesses of different types of evidence.

The not so good:

One downside of the book is that it is hard to understand the relative contributions of factors he describes: there are so many of them that you do feel overwhelmed at points. He helps by summarizing after every chapter. He does some relative weighting of various factors toward the end, mostly to tell you that their combined predictive power is becoming more significant, but that any single factor is quite weak, so maybe don’t do it at home. As a reader, you realize that chances are you cannot apply these things to your life quite that directly. It is quite tricky to interpret these things and very easy to fall for an over-interpretation, and one as a reader is simply not equipped to do this on your own. Maybe you just have to enjoy this book for what it is, which is not a self-help book.

The last few chapters feel more anecdotal and less critically engaged than the first few. E.g., the latter part of the book repeatedly refers to a study suggesting punitive-god monotheism arises in larger societies motivated by the need for strangers to cooperate despite lack of enforcement. There is not nearly as much scrutiny as when discussing brain imaging, yet I feel this phenomenon may be hopelessly hard to disentangle from a mere historical accident.

He seems primarily concerned with mass killings of groups of humans by other groups of humans, not so much your day-to-day behavior as a person living with other people. I think the second topic is more directly relevant (hopefully). He does warn you in the subtitle this is about humans at their best and their worst. I may be biased to focusing more on the last things I read than on the book as a whole.

The study of judges being systematically harsher right before lunch, and more lenient right after lunch makes an appearance again in this book. I saw it show up on Thinking: Fast and Slow too. In Behave, this study is used to illustrate how the rational brain demands glucose. In Thinking: fast and slow, it is used to illustrate willpower “depletion” effects. It is not the only study used to back this up in either book, but it is one that people love writing about, and Robert Sapolsky indulges in it as well, bringing it up a few times throughout the book and using it as comic (tragic?) relief. A few months after that study was published, a letter came out in the same journal pointing out the cases were not randomly ordered, that the last cases before ending a session were those for unrepresented prisoners, along with other factors not considered by the authors. Annie Duke wrote a longer entry on this including links, which you can look up: “How a sexy narrative can make us forget that correlation does not equal causation”. I am being unfair at Behave by ending with this entry, because he does seem to spend a bunch of time trying to avoid this a lot, but he understandably lets his guard down a few times. This happens to great minds too! ( )

Whew. I’ve always liked science and read lots of science oriented books, up there were a few times when I was crossing my eyes. Not for the faint hearted, this exploration into genetics and environment is most interesting in the light of our current US society where news is controlled by business people, where social media holds sway over everything but the truth, and where people don’t care about facts or truth or anything that is “other.” This book is fascinating and I loved the author. He’s got a real “voice” and is witty, with the knack of making his ideas come alive. ( )

This is a book everyone should read, to at least get an idea of the untrustworthy aspects of our thinking, and maybe even how others take advantage of such.

I initially picked up this book to try to better understand the culturally inculcated apathy regarding the natural world, and subjective avoidance of inconvenient, serious issues affecting humankind. I already understood that, like all creatures with their respective umwelten, on the whole we're so wrapped up in the human bubble that we pay too little attention to the natural world that sustains us. But why, given the supposedly more advanced organization and dendritic connections of our prefrontal cortex (PFC) that subserves reasoning, do we persist to varying degrees in detrimental behavior relative to our sustaining environment (that aside from individual deficiencies and the PFC not maturing until our twenties)?

I found much more in this tome. It is one of the most enlightening books that I've read, not only increasing my understanding and perspective of other books I've read, but also providing insight into why we humans persist in making so many bad decisions, and in ignoring inconvenient problems to our disadvantage. It also gives more depth to the maxim about walking a mile in another person's shoes.

A brilliant treatment of the subject matter to my mind, but this dense and lengthy book made my head hurt. To absorb what the author is conveying takes concentrated reading, a little bit at a time, at least in my case. Working one's way through it carefully though, can be enlightening, even beneficial.

"Looking outward objectively enhances wisdom. Looking inward objectively spawns enlightenment." [paraphrased from Tao Te Ching]

"Human behavior, human social behavior, and in many cases abnormal human social behavior are what this book is primarily about. And it is indeed a mess, a subject involving brain chemistry, hormones, sensory cues, prenatal environment, early experience, genes, both biological and cultural evolution, and ecological pressures, among other things.” That is, the author takes a time regression and situational approach to behaviors. What is currently going on neurologically, and what at various stages in the past facilitated a thought/behavior — that together with exceptions and contradictions.

In tackling this, the author takes an interdisciplinary, and sometimes an interspecies, approach in his presentation, which makes more sense to me than the blinkered bucket approach of some other so-called influential scientists I have felt were full of themselves. To help one understand the material the author includes three explanatory appendices on relevant basic scientific concepts — Neuroscience 101, The Basics of Endocrinology, and Protein Basics. Explaining the subject matter in depth, the author can't avoid scientific terms in differentiating, but once one gets a handle on the terminology the writing is easier to follow.

I liked the author's definition of ethology, i.e. "the science of interviewing an animal in its own language." This leads to the point that the reader should carefully consider what the author is saying, because he will often enough turn a phrase to keep the reader awake. That, and how one's thinking may influence interpretation of what the author presents ;-)

I also liked the author's explanation of evolutionary selection. He begins by noting that, “Evolution rests on three steps: (a) certain biological traits are inherited by genetic means; (b) mutations and gene recombination produce variation in those traits; (c) some of those variants confer more “fitness” than others. Given those conditions, over time the frequency of more 'fit' gene variants increases in a population.” And he addresses common misconceptions about such, “First, that evolution favors survival of the fittest. Instead evolution is about reproduction, passing on copies of genes." ... Second that “evolution can select for preadaptations—neutral traits that prove useful in the future. This doesn’t happen; selection is for traits pertinent to the present. Related to this is the misconception that living species are somehow better adapted than extinct species. Instead, the latter were just as well adapted, until environmental conditions changed sufficiently to do them in; the same awaits us.” [my emphasis]

A surprising chapter to me was Metaphors We Kill By. "Our brains’ confusion of the metaphorical with the literal literally matters." It's an aspect I hadn't previously given all that much thought to in the way he explains. In all of humanity's worst genocidal atrocities derisive metaphors have been used extensively to lethal effect. What come to mind are the Nazi regime, Stalin's regime, Cambodia, Armenia, Rwanda, Bosnia, Queensland, East Timor, and eclipsing the sum of these the ninety to ninety-five percent decimation of the indigenous population of the Americas by Western colonists. The latter more prominent in my mind, growing up with Shoshone friends. Yet, what in Western history predominates our thinking about atrocities — not our own atrocities, and not those in countries we have little identity with. Give that some real thought and you may start to see the malleability of our thinking that the author is trying to instill an understanding of.

"Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities." ~ Voltaire

As to clarity, the author does a good job of getting his points across. For example, in explaining the differences between the words inherited and heritability in discussing environmental effects on gene influence on behaviors, the author says, "if you’re trying to guess whether a particular person is likely to have five or four fingers on his hand. Knowing whether he uses buzz saws while blindfolded is more useful than knowing the sequence of his genome."

This book brings to mind Jean Bruller's (pen name Vercors) 1952 novel You Shall Know Them, in which he declared, "All of man’s troubles have arisen from the fact that we do not know what we are and do not agree on what we want to be."

The perceptive reader here may also discern how our thinking is manipulated by others with agendas (whoa, could it be major industries propagandize for the sake of profit :-). Of course there are no pat techniques as effects vary by individual, but such as subliminal stimulus (e.g. certain words and/or seemingly random periphery images) has a respectable success rate in targeted groups with similar inclinations.

"It's easier to fool people than it is to convince them they have been fooled." ~ Mark Twain

Along this line, in comparing primate species with humans, the author notes at one point that primates are unlikely to consciously strategize deception, and when they do practice deception they don't seem to feel bad or morally soiled in doing so, nor actually believe their lies. Concluding that, for those things we need humans ;-) I found the neurological aspects this raised interesting.

"We aren’t chimps, and we aren’t bonobos. We’re not a classic pair-bonding species or a tournament species. We’ve evolved to be somewhere in between in these and other categories that are clear-cut in other animals. It makes us a much more malleable and resilient species. It also makes our social lives much more confusing and messy, filled with imperfection and wrong turns."

The author presents considerable evidencing of numerous studies showing that we humans are less rational and autonomous decision makers than we like to think. As one example dealt with at length, stress, which we all experience in varying situations and degrees, further stimulates poor decision making. But that's not all by a long shot that is at play, as the reader will learn. In numerous chapters, pay particular attention to conclusions and exceptions at the end, and give them some thought. Also, chapter lead-ins, and the trashing of common misconceptions, are important in understanding the following material.

The final chapter, War and Peace, is an optimistic offering such as evidence that our thinking has improved, and examining ways to improve further.

Warning: Many of the studies discussed aren't all that upsetting to a general reader. But, there are some that are likely distressing, depending on the reader's cultural biases.

Another subject relative book that should be read is The Meaning of Human Existence by Edward O. Wilson.

=================

Quiz 1: Cognitively speaking, do you know what the opposite of love is? “Biologically, intense love and intense hate aren’t opposites. The opposite of each is indifference.”

Quiz 2: Strictly speaking, are men better at math than women? If you answered yes, or no for the wrong reason, you are incorrect. Cultural influence strongly affects the difference in math aptitudes. Look at the difference in math aptitudes between gender-equality and gender-inequality cultures.

Quiz 3: Do consistent political orientations arise from deep, implicit factors that have remarkably little to do with specific political issues? Yup, political ideology is but one manifestation of larger internal forces. [This is dealt with at length.]

Such quizzes relative to human behavior could go on and on, showing how our thinking is a mis-mash of conflicting affects, that are not necessarily trustworthy. Read carefully, and you might come to see the relevance of the first chapter epigraph in my own book, "A common hindrance in life is our own thinking."

A final note: "Brains and cultures coevolve." Give that a good hard thought.

“Live as if your Life has consequences far beyond your understanding. It does.” ~ Duncan Morrison

Enhance your frame of reference with a balance of meaningful reading. Please, for our sake, our children's sake, and the sake all the innocents whose futures are threatened.

Okay, I'm ready for some lighter reading now :-) ( )

I got through about two thirds of this book, avidly lapping up both the author's wisdom and humor - until I got into chapter dealing with a topic that I knew something about, where I began to feel that the author’s – openly declared – liberal views made him less than impartial on a number of issues. I still thoroughly enjoyed reading the book, but it made me aware of a certain selectivity in the author’s use of sources – both the facts he quotes and their interpretation.

The first half of the book deals with one of the author’s own area of expertise, neurobiology, and how the interaction between the various parts of the brain influences behavior. It is a detailed and comprehensive review of how neurons work, the role of hormones and other chemicals, and genetic factors may influence behavior. He dispels some myths; testosterone doesn’t always equate with aggressive behavior; it just increases the intensity of any type of behavioral reaction. Increased dopamine doesn’t always produce more pleasure, etc. Throughout, he emphasizes “context” as the key factor which mitigates the influence of all these biological factors on behavior, and confounds the ability to make accurate predictions.

In dealing with moral cognition, and the differences between social/political conservatives and liberals, he quotes from the work of social psychologist Jonathan Haidt of NYU, who identifies five foundations of morality - care versus harm; fairness versus cheating; loyalty versus betrayal; authority versus subversion; sanctity versus degradation. Both experimental and real-world data show that liberals preferentially value two foundations, caring and fairness. In contrast, conservatives value all five more or less equally, with less emphasis on the first two. He then implies that Haidt is a closet conservative masquerading as a liberal, in order to support a conservative worldview that liberals are morally impoverished, with half their moral foundations atrophied. The thrust of Haidt's work is in fact quite the reverse; that, in order to reduce polarization, it is important to understand other people's moral priorities - not to condemn them for them. In contrast, Sapolsky supports a more partisan interpretation, espoused by Joshua Greene of Harvard, that liberals have more "refined" moral foundations, having jettisoned the "less important and more historically damaging" ones that conservatives value. In his book “Moral Tribes”, Joshua Greene does dispute Haidt’s view that all moral foundations are of equal value; he says that American social conservatives place special value only on their own “tribal” authorities, “tribal” loyalties, and their own religion; but he does not use the words “more refined” or “less important and historically damaging” about these moral foundations. Greene’s characterization of conservatives’ values is descriptive; Sapolsky’s misrepresentation of his argument characterizes them - by definition - as retrograde and inferior.

He uses a similar tactic in a chapter dealing with empathy and feeling others’ pain. Sapolsky says in a footnote that, considering whose pain you readily feel can be an “informative political litmus test.” His unsubtle example is a fetus versus a homeless person. This is followed with a quote from a book by political scientist Keith Wailoo “What it means to be liberal or conservative became ideologically solidified around the problem of pain.” In his book “Pain; A Political History”, Wailoo explains what he meant. “There was in fact such a thing as a liberal pain standard that had been developed within disability policy, in medicine and in science, and in government in the decades before Reagan became president, and there was, in his (Reagan’s) own time, a severe backlash aiming to impose a conservative standard of pain.” Wailoo was making essentially the same point as Haidt, that views about pain standards and moral stances both are products of specific socio-political and cultural values; while Sapolsky just wants to assert the superiority of the liberal versions.

Other parts of the chapter on empathy are very illuminating:

• That empathy can become an objective in its own right and essentially a road block to action. Too much empathy can impede doing what is necessary; which is why health care professionals are trained to keep empathy at bay.

• That highly charitable people tend to have been brought up by parents who were charitable and who emphasized charitable acts as a moral imperative (particularly in a religious context).i.e. being charitable is part of self-definition.

• That, across a worldwide range of religions, the more people see themselves as accountable to god, the more likely they are to behave “pro-socially” even when no one else is looking.

In his chapter on reforming the criminal justice system, in the light of modern understanding of neurobiological influences on behavior, he gets into the issue of free will. Most people believe in a “mitigated free will”; that is a free will that is subject to influence from biological factors, physical or mental impairment, childhood upbringing, economic circumstances, cultural background, etc. This belief requires an implicit acceptance of Cartesian duality, which the author parodies hilariously, by describing the “homunculus” sitting at a control panel in a concrete bunker somewhere in the brain, whose executive decisions about how to behave are sometimes disrupted or preempted by factors outside of its control. He acknowledges that belief in mitigated free will is bolstered by the fact that, at its current state, brain science is unable to make accurate (or any) predictions about how a given individual will behave; however, he is confident in the ability of science, at some point in the future, to be more reliably predictive of behavior than it currently is. This is the usual pretention of scientists that the “Mind of God” must inevitably yield its secrets to scientific advances. An unapologetic believer in biological determinism, he makes no attempt to grapple with “the hard problem” of consciousness; although – very honestly – he does admit at the end of the chapter that he “can’t really imagine how to live your life as if there is no free will.”

This is a very good read, very informative and LOL funny in parts. For this reason, it is a little bit insidious, because it is not impartial science. Read it, but read it with caution. ( )

"If you had to boil this book down to a single phrase, it would be “It’s complicated.” Nothing seems to cause anything; instead everything just modulates something else." (674)

An exhaustive study of human behavior by a polymathic neuroscientist who studies baboons and teaches at Stanford, this massive undertaking talks about everything from brain structure and hormones to culture and philosophy, and could easily have been broken up into two or three separate books. Sapolsky is a very good writer (I loved A Primate's Memoir) and is also obviously a good teacher (I recommend the YouTube videos of his class), plus he is anything but arrogant.

He is meticulous about reminding us when he reintroduces a topic he talked about earlier, as well as about foreshadowing that a particular topic is going to reappear. He obligingly attaches appendices that provide basic information about things such as neurology for those who might be tackling a book of this type without knowing much. Of course, that's essential, since this book could be the curriculum for a multi-year college curriculum.

I have a few criticisms of the book. It may seem handy to use acronyms for the various brain structures, and I get it, but it's easier for me to remember "anterior cingulate cortex" than "ACC." Not that I can remember what the anterior cingulate cortex does even after having read the whole thing. I have to look it up every time (It's involved in empathy, impulse control, emotion, and decision-making) (I do, however, remember the amygdala and the insular cortex functions, because damn).

Another criticism is that while I love footnotes ordinarily, he would have done well to resist the urge to include so many of them in this book. I enjoyed reading them, and couldn't keep from looking at them, but it made reading the book a little bewildering and incredibly slow from time to time. He really couldn't resist shoving all the cool facts in, and yeah, they're cool, but I borrowed this book on Kindle from the library and had to renew it twice.

I also wish he had resisted the urge to tackle the philosophical problem of whether or not free will exists, though I guess he had to because if you are examining all the ways in which behavior is determined from synapses to cultures, you have to accept that the idea of free will is implicated. But his "homunculus" discussion either needed to be dealt with in more detail (oh, golly, another hundred pages) or in less, because he was wading into waters that are not only deep but turbulent, and the resulting chapter seemed dismissive, as well as being less grounded in research than even the chapter on religion.

That said, the book is worth wading through. If you buy the physical book, I recommend cutting it into chunks so that you don't get a backache from carrying it around. If you find that heretical, buy two copies. ( )

Magisterial survey of how we make our best and worst decisions, diving right into all the biological details from dendrites and axions on up to the frontal cortex and the amygdala, not forgetting hormones and neurotransmitters. A bit heavy on the chemistry at times, and his love of acronyms confuses, but wonderful overall. Would like to listen again. ( )

"Was mich nicht umbringt, macht mich stärker." Okay, Nietzsche may not have had my reading this book in mind when he said that, but, true, this was a bit of a struggle for me to read, and I feel stronger for having done so, in the end. From facts offered by the author that I may never fully grasp, to facts abundantly clear to me even before reading this book, but now confirmed by one really sharp guy, and everything in between, this was quite a roller coaster ride for me. Folks, this is the full meal deal on behavior. From brain cells to prison cells, how and why we do what we do is in here. In my view, a reader simply has to read it to find out fully what I mean. I will add just this: I hoped I would find some insight into how very differently large segments of the American public is behaving, of late. I had my suspicions and my beliefs about that going into this book, and I was not disappointed. Much of what I already thought might be the case, has been confirmed or clarified, but, most importantly, I now am much better equipped to absorb and respond in meaningful, precise way to what I am apparently destined to confront for the next several years at least. I admit, one shouldn't have to read this book before confronting your errant relatives at Thanksgiving dinner, but -- trust me -- it would actually help. ( )

The conceit of the book is to look at the biological influences on behavior from distant (evolutionary, parental environment, prenatal environment, etc.) to microscopically close (how do neurons fire). It’s really too big to be grasped in one book, but I liked Sapolsky’s meticulous recounting of the evidence that even when genes strongly influence a behavior, they only do so in a particular environment; change the environment, and the same genes may strongly predict a completely different and even opposite set of behaviors (e.g., aggressiveness in mice). He also discusses the relationship between free will and biological explanations of behavior in a clear and useful, if potentially quite disturbing, way. ( )

I have a man-crush on Robert Sapolsky. Great scientist, superb writer. ( )

This book is long, hard going, but it's well worth it - it's one of the only books on neuroscience I've ever read where the author doesn't treat the discovery of which gene secretes which neurochemical to create which response as though that's a meaningful answer to any question. Rather, Sapolsky goes into detail about the interaction between genes, hormones, biochemistry, environment, and long-lasting biological change, making it clear that while there's a biological explanation for everything, there are so many variables involved that saying we can identify a single source of any given human behavior is...laughable at best. The book really gets good in the second half, when he starts to apply all this to the things we're really concerned about - compassion and generosity, violence and aggression. Sapolsky is optimistic overall, but he makes it clear that improving society is going to mean fighting our biology in some ways (or, more effectively, learning how to trick it). ( )

So... wow. Where to begin? I was fascinated from beginning to end. Behave is one of the few books I'll probably read over at least once. Maybe twice.

This book is absolutely not pop-science. It's not a book you'll breeze through, which is probably evident by the page count. This is an in-depth exploration of neurobiology, our brains, how we think, why we behave the way we do, and what makes us who we are. It's a massive undertaking, yet somehow Robert Sapolsky managed to wrap it up nice and neat in a complex but fully comprehensible book.

Sapolsky's writing style is what makes this book work for nonacademic readers. In someone else's hands, the content could easily be a complicated tangle of dull, scientific jargon. But Sapolsky lays it out all for us in a manner that is both interesting and easy to understand. His personality shines through with dashes of humor and insight.

I read a lot of nonfiction on similar topics pertaining to the science and psychology of behavior, and this is, without question, one of the best I've ever come across.

I want to mention one issue I had with the ebook format. This book contains a whole lot of footnotes. Because of the structure of ebooks, with pages expanding depending on your font size choice, footnotes don't sit at the bottom of a specified page the way they do in print. Instead they float further along, sometimes several pages beyond the point with the marked content. This can cause a bit of confusion, as you've already moved past the issue referenced. My copy is a Kindle ARC, though I'm not sure the final proof will be any different as footnotes can be problematic in ebook format. Because of that, I'd recommend the print version over the ebook.

*I received an advance ebook copy from the publisher, via NetGalley, in exchange for my honest review.* ( )

4/16/21 Ace Cormier