Behave

The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

By: Robert Sapolsky

Narrated by: Michael Goldstrom

The New York Times best seller.

From the celebrated neurobiologist and primatologist, a landmark, genre-defining examination of human behavior, both good and bad, and an answer to the question: Why do we do the things we do?

Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: He starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise moment a behavior occurs, and then hops back in time from there, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy.

And so the first category of explanation is the neurobiological one. A behavior occurs - whether an example of humans at our best, worst, or somewhere in between. What went on in a person's brain a second before the behavior happened? Then Sapolsky pulls out to a slightly larger field of vision, a little earlier in time: What sight, sound, or smell caused the nervous system to produce that behavior? And then, what hormones acted hours to days earlier to change how responsive that individual is to the stimuli that triggered the nervous system? By now he has increased our field of vision so that we are thinking about neurobiology and the sensory world of our environment and endocrinology in trying to explain what happened.

Sapolsky keeps going: How was that behavior influenced by structural changes in the nervous system over the preceding months, by that person's adolescence, childhood, fetal life, and then back to his or her genetic makeup? Finally, he expands the view to encompass factors larger than one individual. How did culture shape that individual's group, what ecological factors millennia old formed that culture? And on and on, back to evolutionary factors millions of years old.

The result is one of the most dazzling tours d'horizon of the science of human behavior ever attempted, a majestic synthesis that harvests cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines to provide a subtle and nuanced perspective on why we ultimately do the things we do...for good and for ill. Sapolsky builds on this understanding to wrestle with some of our deepest and thorniest questions relating to tribalism and xenophobia, hierarchy and competition, morality and free will, and war and peace. Wise, humane, often very funny, Behave is a towering achievement, powerfully humanizing, and downright heroic in its own right.

©2017 Robert M. Sapolsky (P)2017 Penguin Audio

Critic reviews

One of The Washington Post's 10 Best Books of 2017

"It has my vote for science book of the year.” (Parul Sehgal, The New York Times)

“It’s no exaggeration to say that Behave is one of the best nonfiction books I’ve ever read.” (David P. Barash, The Wall Street Journal)

A Magnum Opus

What a work! This book ties together insights ranging from so many disciplines that it defies categorization. Factors influencing human behavior but not determining per se - a major theme) are reviewed and illustrated with countless experimental examples ranging from molecular to societal -with everything in between. Some may find it repetitive but that is the essence of learning. So much detail is included that you should sign up for 15 Medical School credits if you make it to the end. And very importantly the narrator dealt with the big words in a manner was much appreciated by this reviewer - a retired professor of pharmacology.

Very cool book!

I listen to the author's TED Talk and was inspired to listen to the audio book and I wasn't disappointed.

A how to on making the world a better place.

It's dense, but fascinating. A wealth or knowledge from various fields related to behavior.

Drone view of behavioral psychology

The book is very much a Psychology 101 course designed to give the reader an overview of the field, and frankly, it's a haul. Sapolsky covers a lot of ground and frankly, if you don't have some background in biopsychology, you can find yourself bogged down pretty quickly. Nevertheless, there is a lot of information here that has very practical uses and opens the reader to a better understanding of the world around them.

What surprised me, is how literary the book is. Sapolsky is a very fine writer. Clever, humorous and inventive. That was unexpected, but not unappreciated. The narrative is very good, and even though the book is very long, every chapter is satisfying.

My one criticism lies with his political analyses which are media friendly, but unsophisticated and unnecessary. Jonathan Haidt is not as good a writer as Sapolsky, but a better psychologist I think.

Brilliant

I am in academic neuroscientist and I found this book absolutely stellar – a perfect mix of rigorous academics and digestible synthesis.

Made my grey matter sit up and take notice!

Yes, it brought back a great deal of what I've learned along the way in Nursing. Pretty technical though. The author has an amazing sense of humor, so when I was listening to it in the car, I would laugh out loud!

Fascinating

I loved it. Very well written. The reader has an easy voice to listen to.

The user manual for humanity

This is an astonishingly, enriching and informative excursion into human behaviour, it’s causes and origins.

Chances are, if you’re reading this book, you’re already well informed about genetics poly genetics, Epigenetics, psychology, sociology. human behaviour and cognitive sciences - at least at the level of a well-informed lay person.

Reading this book will further deepen your understanding of human nature and behaviour, and its implications for other fields of related study.

The one downside to this book is that your understanding will be at a depth where you will not have enough shared context with your social circle. And you may have a hard time having thoughtful conversations with them.

I’ve been handing out copies of this to my friends, just so I can have conversations with them about why people do what they do. And how to understand each other more deeply.

Great book

It is often that an author takes a side and is unable to see across to their opposition, but in this book Sapolsky does a great job of giving the reader space to find hope, without making unsubstantiated claims as to the need to find hope within the information he shares. He demonstrates the need for further understanding, while demonstrating the significance of what we current believe to be the case in relation to behavior and its roots. He also offers a gradation to his perspective, acknowledging that context is paramount to understanding, illuminating that, while generalizations are interesting and insightful, outliers will always exist. This is a great read, very well read, and definitely worth the many hours of listening!

Dizzying overview of Behavior and the attempts to understand it.

Well worth the time to spend with this brilliant and entertaining author as he guilds you through his vexing science of neuroscience as it attempts to understand animal behavior and especially the most vexing animal..you!
At times your head may well spin as he convinces you of say the science pointing to a part of the brain that causes mirroring behavior only to shot holes in it a moment later.
This is true science evolving convincing understanding and for this alone I applaud the author.
I am left stimulated to dig deeper into how by understanding our evolving brains we may actually evolve as a species to value the obvious importance of nurture in the young brain. How we can overcome our instinctual impulse and how liberal thinking rises above our worst instincts.
The take aways are numerous and this should be required reading of anyone who is a policy maker of human activity.