A Troublesome Inheritance

Genes, Race, and Human History

By: Nicholas Wade

Narrated by: Alan Sklar

Length: 10 hrs and 48 mins

Publisher's summary

Drawing on startling new evidence from the mapping of the genome, an explosive new account of the genetic basis of race and its role in the human story.

Fewer ideas have been more toxic or harmful than the idea of the biological reality of race, and with it the idea that humans of different races are biologically different from one another. For this understandable reason, the idea has been banished from polite academic conversation. Arguing that race is more than just a social construct can get a scholar run out of town, or at least off campus, on a rail. Human evolution, the consensus view insists, ended in prehistory.

Inconveniently, as Nicholas Wade argues in A Troublesome Inheritance, the consensus view cannot be right. And in fact, we know that populations have changed in the past few thousand years - to be lactose tolerant, for example, and to survive at high altitudes. Race is not a bright-line distinction; by definition it means that the more human populations are kept apart, the more they evolve their own distinct traits under the selective pressure known as Darwinian evolution. For many thousands of years, most human populations stayed where they were and grew distinct, not just in outward appearance but in deeper senses as well.

Wade, the longtime journalist covering genetic advances for The New York Times, draws widely on the work of scientists who have made crucial breakthroughs in establishing the reality of recent human evolution. The most provocative claims in this audiobook involve the genetic basis of human social habits. What we might call middle-class social traits - thrift, docility, nonviolence - have been slowly but surely inculcated genetically within agrarian societies, Wade argues. These “values” obviously had a strong cultural component, but Wade points to evidence that agrarian societies evolved away from hunter-gatherer societies in some crucial respects. Also controversial are his findings regarding the genetic basis of traits we associate with intelligence, such as literacy and numeracy, in certain ethnic populations, including the Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews.

Wade believes deeply in the fundamental equality of all human peoples. He also believes that science is best served by pursuing the truth without fear, and if his mission to arrive at a coherent summa of what the new genetic science does and does not tell us about race and human history leads straight into a minefield, then so be it. This will not be the last word on the subject, but it will begin a powerful and overdue conversation.

©2014 Nicholas Wade (P)2014 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

"It is hard to convey how rich this book is.... The book is a delight to read - conversational and lucid. And it will trigger an intellectual explosion the likes of which we haven't seen for a few decades.... At the heart of the book, stated quietly but with command of the technical literature, is a bombshell.... So one way or another, A Troublesome Inheritance will be historic. Its proper reception would mean enduring fame." (The Wall Street Journal)

"Extremely well-researched, thoughtfully written and objectively argued.... The real lesson of the book should not be lost on us: A scientific topic cannot be declared off limits or whitewashed because its findings can be socially or politically incendiary.... Ultimately Wade’s argument is about the transparency of knowledge." (Ashutosh Jogalekar, Scientific American)

"Wade ventures into territory eschewed by most writers: the evolutionary basis for racial differences across human populations. He argues persuasively that such differences exist.... His conclusion is both straightforward and provocative.... He makes the case that human evolution is ongoing and that genes can influence, but do not fully control, a variety of behaviors that underpin differing forms of social institutions. Wade’s work is certain to generate a great deal of attention." (Publishers Weekly)

This is NOT Racism!...

For decades, feminists railed against the very idea that there were any fundamental biological differences in males and females that would influence basic behavior and social roles (despite clear knowledge about the roles of testosterone and estrogen on behavior!), and along came brain science and showed that yes, there are differences in the male and female brains that lead to different behavioral and social tendencies. And now the same for race. Here is the simple fact, PC or not, like it or not: the closer you are to any group genetically, the more you are going to be like that group. Don't like it? Complain to God or the Big Bang or Darwin. Genetics are genetics. Now, does this excuse things like prejudice, social engineering, genecide? Of course not. Does this mean that there is NO role that envirornment plays in development? Of course not. Does this mean that every woman is the same as every other woman and that every black person is exactly the same as the next? Of course not. It does mean that biology plays a big role in behavior and that the closer you are to someone genetically, the more of their behavioral tendencies you will inherit. That's science. Live with it.

Important, enjoyable, understandably tentative

60% of this book is the author laying out in painstaking detail his defense against the charge of racism. This is done though pretty adroitly and doesn't detract overly from the content of his argument. While I don't agree with every conclusion, this is an important book that I enjoyed a great deal and I'm​ more knowledgeable for having read it. What more can I ask?

pretty good (after filtering for bias)

pretty good after filtering for the authors biases.

(he assumes his political philosophy is correct and caters his interpretations of some genetically influenced human qualities to reenforce this philosophy where there can be other conclusions he misses or simply leaves off the table)

Answers to many questions

A brilliant book on modern evolution of humans, presents the most recent genomics data and its analysis.

Generalities and Platitudes make not a conclusion

I did listen to the whole book. I regret that.

He quotes Darwin throughout the book to make some of his points about specialization due to human development. The real great thing about Darwin's book "Origin of Species" is the book is a guide book on how to use critical reasoning in the development of a controversial idea. The author violates all of the necessary steps in order to present an argument. He gives easily shot down straw-man arguments such as "Jared Diamond says that race plays no part in civilization's growth in the development of civilizations". Now, Diamond days say that but it doesn't mean his bigger theme is wrong, geography, plant growth, animal availability and so on doesn't make a difference while race might make a small contribution. (BTW, Diamond's book is much, much better than this one).

He stacks the deck in favor of his thesis. He defines his terms to most favor his argument. Genes and clusters on the genome can determine a person's "race" (I put it in quotes only because he uses that definition for race. That gives him the most flexibility to see the world in terms of race. Scots, Irish and French would fall under that definition as a race, but he doesn't explicitly refer to that subset as a race).

He tells a lot of "just so stories" of how the Leopard got his spots, or in this case why the Chinese is less tolerant than the English (an example he does give). He does hypothesize a really rapid change in our Genome and this leads to different institutions because of different behavior because of genetic differences between races.

Science uses induction to prove, that is going from the particular to the general, the author usually doesn't go from the particular to the general (read Darwin, on how to do that most marvelously). He usually goes from the general to the general thus thinking he's proved his point. He does use some particular data but he can do that poorly, once he said "200 people of Ashkenazim descent in a hospital in Israel have a genetic variant of one gene and 1/3 of them were engineers, scientist or lawyers" much higher than the general population. Wow, that statement by itself is not enough to show anything. His editor should not have allowed that in the book. It doesn't mean that the variant doesn't map to intelligence, but you need another set of data to demonstrate it.

He uses quotes frequently and excerpts from Thomas Sowell's platitudes to support his positions. Generalities in the form of platitudes prove nothing. Sowell is best left on the pages of the "Washington Times". He also quotes platitudes from Niall Ferguson on capitalism and how the West is superior to the East because of behavior due to our genetics thru race. If you want to write a serious book, don't quote Ferguson on economics (if you ever want to see why just read Paul Krugman's blog when he points out why Ferguson is out of his depth in the field of economics).

He does quote from Pinker's book, "Better Angels of our Nature", and says the Pinker was afraid to use race and stayed away from that as explanation. That's true, but if you read the book (and I have), Pinker doesn't shy away from a whole host of other reason beyond genetic differences which explains the decline of violence over time that have nothing to do with genetic differences due to race.

Darwin, in his book, would always word the counter argument to his thesis in the best terms possible before he shot it down. This author doesn't really bring up counter arguments. If you bring up intelligence between races, you should bring up the "Flynn Effect", the fact that IQs when normalized to 1916 have gone up over 15 points. Either we have gotten a lot smarter or there is something in the culture/environment that makes us perform better on test that measure our abstract reasoning or as the author would conclude our genes made us smarter. I don't have the answer, but I do know if I were writing a book to persuade the reader to my belief I would have mentioned items that seem to contradict my thesis. There were a lot of other points the author should have brought up in order to shot down, but he doesn't. I'm left to guess he really doesn't have a good counter argument?

It's a pity the author did such a poor job. There can be some merit to his thesis, but this book doesn't provide any support for it. Unfortunately, this book will appeal to some who aren't attuned to critical reasoning and prefer generalities and platitudes, and I highly don't recommend it.

Interesting subject but pure speculation

What disappointed you about A Troublesome Inheritance?

The author has chosen an interesting subject. However, aside from describing two experiments by some Russian scientist with rats and foxes, the rest of the book is pure speculation. The book is full of guesses, ideas, hypothesis, but other than in the two cases mentioned above, there is absolutely no description of any proof, experiments, etc.

What could Nicholas Wade have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

To stick to science as opposed to description of what the author considers likely or might have been.

Troublesome Incoherence

Why was this book written?

The author says it is an attempt to dispel the fear of racism that overhangs the discussion of human group differences and to begin to explore the far reaching implications the discovery that human evolution has been recent, copious, and regional.

I read a lot on the topic of genetics and I have been impressed with the depth and breadth of the research into geographically linked genetic traits. I have seen no fear of racism in any mainstream research. It seems to have been very widely understood that human evolution has been recent, copious and regional. I have seen no dispute about this. So, why was this book written? The book seems to make the argument that it should be OK to discuss genetically influenced behaviors differences between races (as opposed to family, regions, or other well defined classifications.) This is troublesome as the term race has been, and continues to actively be, used to justify segregation, discrimination, injustice, and genocide.

Wade says “The idea that human populations are different from one another has been actively ignored by academics and policy makers for fear inquiry might promote racism.” I have never heard ANYONE say human populations are not genetically different. Indeed there is substantial research on genetics of various populations and there is a well-developed science studying geographic genotypes.

As far as I could tell the author never actually proposes a concrete definition of Race. Instead he points out some fuzzy statistical clustering of alleles and calls that race. The number of races he is discussing seems to vary from three to five (or more). The author admits his races, however defined, have fuzzy boarders, so you can never be sure which race to assign an individual.

Wade repeatedly presents long discussions of other research that (it seems to me) strongly support theories that environment, culture or other non-genetic factors greatly impact societal differences. Yet, Wade then waves these conclusions away pointing out that, although the research seems to support non-genetic factors, surely it is obvious that genetics is really much more likely.

Wade has quite a few unsubstantiated ideas he feels are obvious.
Arabs, Afghans, and sub-Saharan Africans are genetically predisposed to tribalism, so we should not expect democracy to work with them; obviously.
Jews are genetically predisposed to prefer money lending; obviously.
Language grammar rules must be genetically based; obviously.
Social institutions differ due to tiny genetic differences in social behavior; obviously.
Religion must be genetically based; obviously.
If a race did not have genetically based behavioral differences it would be quick and easy for the race to take on the successful social institutions of a more successful race; obviously.
It is hard to conceive of any circumstance racism could be successfully resurrected; obviously?
Resurrected? What planet does this guy live on?
I suppose white Cambridge men are not exposed to the dark side of racism regularly (except for the British teeth thing).

Wade says “It would be better to take account of evolutionary differences [in behavior] than to continue to ignore them.” Sure. If there was any evidence I am sure it would be carefully considered. Unfortunately there is only guesswork, not evidence.

Wade never mentions some very important non-genetic effectors of behavior. Mothers that experience stress during or prior to pregnancy have offspring with altered behavior patterns, infants that see some parental behavior become imprinted and will repeat that behavior when the time comes, parents teach their children complex behaviors, and societies train young humans for decades before adulthood. Such non-genetic biological systems allow humans to alter behavior much more rapidly in dynamic environments than genetic evolution could support. Many of the behaviors Wade discusses (radius of trust, aggression, risk taking, etc.) are exactly the kind of behaviors requiring rapid changes in response to a dynamic environment, thus we would expect these to be overwhelmingly controlled by these non-genetic systems.

Wade attacks several straw-men, like those people who say human evolution has stopped or has no effect of behavior. I have never heard anyone (other than creationists) say human evolution has stopped, or has no effect on human behavior, only that other factors appear to be overwhelmingly more important and there is little or no evidence of specific genetic influences.

Wade says his theory is not racist because there is no assertion of superiority (except your race has the violent, slothful, tribal, stupid, unimaginative, dark skinned genes while his race has non-violent, hard working, cooperative, intelligent, innovative, light skinned genes; but these are not value judgments, these are simply facts; obviously.

Wade criticized Diamond's Germs, Guns and Steel. I am no fan of Germs, Guns, and Steel and I criticized Diamond’s tendency to cherry pick data that agreed with his theory, but Germs, Guns and Steel was a gem compared to A Troublesome Inheritance.

Most importantly Wade never proposes a single experiment to test any of his numerous guesswork hypotheses.
This is not science.

The narration was quite clear but very slow and a little monotonous. I almost never speed up the audio but on my first listen I sped it up to 1.25 then 1.5. On my second listen I did it at 3.0 and it was still quite intelligible (sound-wise).

Mein Kampf rehash

This is little more than a rehash of Mein Kampf. He quibbles with Adolf over who exactly constitutes the Master Race, but uses similar methodology to arrive at similar conclusions. He throws in a lot of genetics to make it sound like his thesis is based in science, but skips making the causal link between the science of genetics and his propaganda. His book provides strong evidence not for the genetic superiority of “the West,” but for its intellectual degeneration.