No Two Alike Human Nature And Human Individuality

"A display of scientific courage and imagination." —William Saletan, New York Times Book Review Why do people—even identical twins reared in the same home—differ so much in personality? Armed with an inquiring mind and insights from evolutionary psychology, Judith Rich Harris sets out to solve the mystery of human individuality.

Harris takes on the "experts" and boldly questions conventional wisdom of parents' role in their children's lives, asserting that it's not the home environment that shapes children, but the environment they share with their peers.

Follows a pair of birds on a snowflake-filled journey through a winter landscape, where everything everywhere, from branches and leaves to forests full of trees, is unique.

A superb introduction to the timeless struggle to understand human nature, this book compresses into a small volume the essence of such thinkers as Karl Marx, Sigmund Freud, Jean Paul Sartre, B.F. Skinner, and Plato.

If he had been pressed, Macaulay would probably have admitted that there are cases in which human acts and impulses to act occur independently of any idea of an end to be gained by them. If I have a piece of grit in my eye and ask some one to take it out with the corner of his handkerchief, I generally close the eye as soon as the handkerchief comes near, and always feel a strong impulse to do so. Nobody supposes that I close my eye because, after due consideration, I think it my interest to do so.

Why do we behave the way we do? Biologist Paul Ehrlich suggests that although people share a common genetic code, these genes "do not shout commands at us...at the very most, they whisper suggestions." He argues that human nature is not so much result of genetic coding; rather, it is heavily influenced by cultural conditioning and environmental factors. With personal anecdotes, a well-written narrative, and clear examples, Human Natures is a major work of synthesis and scholarship as well as a valuable primer on genetics and evolution that makes complex scientific concepts accessible to lay readers.

A must-read for anyone who has ever wondered why people do what they do, from the popular author of The Naked Ape. This study concerns the city dweller. Morris finds remarkable similarities with captive zoo animals and looks closely at the aggressive, sexual and parental behaviour of the human species under the stresses and pressures of urban living. ‘Compelling and absorbing...Morris is concerned with the tension between our biology and our culture, as it is expressed in power, sex, status and war games’ New York Times

A brilliant inquiry into the origins of human nature from the author of Rationality, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. "Sweeping, erudite, sharply argued, and fun to read..also highly persuasive." --Time Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize Updated with a new afterword One of the world's leading experts on language and the mind explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits-a doctrine held by many intellectuals during the past century-denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts. Injecting calm and rationality into debates that are notorious for ax-grinding and mud-slinging, Pinker shows the importance of an honest acknowledgment of human nature based on science and common sense.