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Book Summary and Reviews of Genesis by Edward O. Wilson

Genesis by Edward O. Wilson

Genesis

The Deep Origin of Societies

by Edward O. Wilson

  • Critics' Consensus (1):
  • Published:
  • Mar 2019, 224 pages
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About this book

Book Summary

Forming a twenty-first-century statement on Darwinian evolution, one shorn of "religious and political dogma," Edward O. Wilson offers a bold work of scientific thought and synthesis.

Asserting that religious creeds and philosophical questions can be reduced to purely genetic and evolutionary components, and that the human body and mind have a physical base obedient to the laws of physics and chemistry, Genesis demonstrates that the only way for us to fully understand human behavior is to study the evolutionary histories of nonhuman species. Of these, Wilson demonstrates that at least seventeen - among them the African naked mole rat and the sponge- dwelling shrimp - have been found to have advanced societies based on altruism and cooperation.

Whether writing about midges who "dance about like acrobats" or schools of anchovies who protectively huddle "to appear like a gigantic fish," or proposing that human society owes a debt of gratitude to "postmenopausal grandmothers" and "childless homosexuals," Genesis is a pithy yet path-breaking work of evolutionary theory, braiding twenty-first-century scientific theory with the lyrical biological and humanistic observations for which Wilson is known.

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Reviews

Media Reviews

"Starred Review. The acclaimed naturalist delivers a pithy summary of evidence for Darwinian evolution of human behavior.... A magisterial history of social evolution, [and] lucid, concise overview of human evolution that mentions tools and brain power in passing but focuses on the true source of our preeminence: the ability to work together." - Kirkus

"Wilson (On Human Nature), a Pulitzer Prize winner and Harvard evolutionary biologist, addresses what he calls the six "great transitions of evolution" that led to human society in this ambitious treatise, his 32nd book.... He does an impressive job in this short text of making the nature of the transitions clear." - Publishers Weekly

"Arresting.... Deeply informative and provocative." - Booklist

This information about Genesis was first featured in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.

Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.

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Author Information

Edward O. Wilson

Edward O. Wilson is widely recognized as one of the world's preeminent biologists and naturalists. The author of more than thirty books, including Half-Earth, The Social Conquest of Earth, The Meaning of Human Existence, and Letters to a Young Scientist, Wilson is a professor emeritus at Harvard University. The winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, he lives with his wife, Irene Wilson, in Lexington, Massachusetts.

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