Human Biology

We have lost the war on cancer. We spend $150 billion each year treating it, yet - a few innovations notwithstanding - a patient with cancer is as likely to die of it as one was 50 years ago. Most new drugs add mere months to one's life at agonizing physical and financial cost. In The First Cell, Azra Raza offers a searing account of how both medicine and our society (mis)treats cancer, how we can do better, and why we must.

“In this masterpiece, Jamil Zaki weaves together the very latest science with stories that will stay in your heart forever.”—Angela Duckworth, author of Grit Don’t miss Jamil Zaki’s TED Talk, “We’re experiencing an empathy shortage, but we can fix it together,” online now...

A captivating and insightful deep dive into the world of human intuition, exploring the power of this elusive phenomenon and how it can be harnessed to better know and trust ourselves. We rely on our intuition, even though we don’t fully understand what it is, how it works, or if we can even...

The author of The New York Times bestseller This is Your Brain on Music reveals music’s role in the evolution of human culture and “will leave you awestruck.” (The New York Times) Daniel J. Levitin’s astounding debut bestseller, This is Your Brain on Music, enthralled and delighted...

A giant of archaeology, Colin Renfrew has immeasurably improved our understanding of human history. In this passionately argued work, he offers a concise summary of prehistory - human existence that predates the development of written records - while challenging the very definition of prehistory itself.

A Next Big Idea Club Must Read of February 2025 From the author of The Social Leap comes this thought-provoking exploration into humans’ two core evolutionary needs, for connection and autonomy, how the modern world has thrown them out of whack, and how we can rebalance them to improve our...

From one of the finest nature writers at work in America today-a lyrical, dramatic, illuminating tour of the hidden domain of wild animals. Whether recalling the experience of being chased through the Grand Canyon by a bighorn sheep, swimming with sharks off the coast of British Columbia...

An exciting and accessible new view of the evolution of human and animal life on Earth. From the author of national bestseller, Your Inner Fish, this extraordinary journey of discovery spans centuries, as explorers and scientists seek to understand the origins of life's immense diversity...

An engrossing and revealing study of why we deem certain animals “pests” and others not—from cats to rats, elephants to pigeons—and what this tells us about our own perceptions, beliefs, and actions, as well as our place in the natural world A squirrel in the garden. A rat in the wall. A...

A leading cognitive scientist argues that a deep sense of good and evil is bred in the bone. From John Locke to Sigmund Freud, philosophers and psychologists have long believed that we begin life as blank moral slates. Many of us take for granted that babies are born selfish and that it is...

NATIONAL BOOK AWARD WINNER NATIONAL BESTSELLER The definitive resource on perhaps the single most universal human concern: death. Even more relevant than when it was first published, this edition addresses contemporary issues in end-of-life care and includes an all-embracing and incisive...

A leading neuroscientist offers a history of the evolution of the brain from unicellular organisms to the complexity of animals and human beings today Renowned neuroscientist Joseph LeDoux digs into the natural history of life on earth to provide a new perspective on the similarities between us...

From entomologist Barrett Klein comes a buzz-worthy exploration of the many ways insects have affected human society, history, and culture Insects surround us. They fuel life on Earth through their roles as pollinators, predators, and prey, but rarely do we consider the outsize influence they...

“Holding brain science in one hand and rich emotional presence in the other, this book feels timely and necessary.”—Shauna Niequist, New York Times bestselling author of Present Over Perfect Why is there such a gap between what you want to do and what you actually do? The host of Ask...

USA TODAY BESTSELLER Read by the author. Change your relationship with technology. Change your life. Share. Post. Reply…Most of us have gotten so used to notifications and alerts, pings and rings, that even if we don't want to be on our phones so much, we don't know what to do about it. The...

Written by experts and authorities in the field and professionally narrated for easy listening, this crash course is a valuable tool both during school and when preparing for the USMLE, or if you're simply interested in the subject of cell biology and histology. The audio is focused and high-yield, covering the most important topics you might expect to learn in a typical medical school cell biology and histology course. Included are both capsule and detailed explanations of critical issues and topics you must know to master cell biology and histology.

A founder of the field of evolutionary medicine uses his decades of experience as a psychiatrist to provide a much-needed new framework for making sense of mental illness. With his classic book Why We Get Sick, Dr. Randolph Nesse helped to establish the field of evolutionary medicine. Now he...

Many people believe that, at its core, biological sex is a fundamental, diverging force in our development. According to this familiar story, differences between the sexes are shaped by past evolutionary pressures - women are more cautious and parenting-focused, men seek status to attract more mates - re-created in each generation by sex hormones and male and female brains. This, in turn, is the basis of supposedly entrenched inequalities in our modern societies.

Just over 125,000 years ago, humanity was going extinct until a dramatic shift occurred—Homo sapiens started tracking the tides in order to eat the nearby oysters. Before long, they’d pulled themselves back from the brink of extinction. What saved us during that period of endangerment? The...

A New York Public Library "Best Book of the Year" “The Forgotten Sense leaves us with the hope of new discoveries and new recoveries—so that we may once again revel in the glorious, fragrant world around us.”—Wall Street Journal By one of the world’s leading researchers into the...