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  • Behave

  • The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
  • Written by: Robert Sapolsky
  • Narrated by: Michael Goldstrom
  • Length: 26 hrs and 27 mins
  • 4.6 out of 5 stars (174 ratings)

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Behave cover art

Behave

Written by: Robert Sapolsky
Narrated by: Michael Goldstrom
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Publisher's Summary

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

What the critics say

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)

What listeners say about Behave

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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Overall Excellent, But Maybe Overly Broad in Scope

Overall, this is an excellent book that suffers a bit from over-breadth. It essentially describes how humans make decisions, from a few seconds to a few minutes to a few millennial before that decision is made. It starts with an in-depth look at what's going on in a brain, pulls the camera out to look at hormones, then to genetics, and then all the way out to evolution and society.

It's fascinating, but the breadth means there's not as much time for depth. For example, the book lightly touches on human morality and its evolutionary roots. Other books have devoted their entire content to that topic (see for example the excellent The Moral Animal). I can't really knock the book too much for this - that's just going to be a given with a book that has such a broad scope.

However, the very broad scope of the book also gives the author too much leeway in what he can discuss. At times the book feels like a grab bag of the author's various interests, sometimes only tenuously connected to the main topic (e.g., a section on the non-existence of free will and the criminal justice system). These are topics that would be interesting books on their own, but here they seem like a bit of a diversion from the main course of the narrative.

The only other issue is that this doesn't always work well as an audio book. The first few chapters in particular are a bit of a slog, with the author dropping frequent abbreviations for brain regions and neurochemicals. In a paper book, it would be easy enough to pop back to see what an abbreviation stands for, but in audio it's basically impossible (particularly when driving). Similarly, there are a few chapters that direct readers to appendixes (also annoying to navigate to), or that involve long lists of examples. Some audiobook specific editing would have been nice to tidy these things up.

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5 people found this helpful

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    4 out of 5 stars
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Hard book

The subject of this book is complex. It takes effort to follow and use of abbreviations is not helping at all but makes it even harder to comprehend.

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2 people found this helpful

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Best Science Book I have ever read

This was fantastic in all ways... interesting, well organized, well read and performed, challenging, informative, etc

I have nothing but good things to say about this amazing body of knowledge

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2 people found this helpful

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    2 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

Not at his best

The explanatory narratives are at times eye-opening but generally verbose and dry reading like a textbook.

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1 person found this helpful

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Thought provoking and challenging

It required careful listening, but well worth the effort. I really appreciated how it didn’t skimp on details and yet was still accessible to a layperson.

#Audible1

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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

another great Gates reccomendation

right and left brain and political views surronding. stress, sleep, poverty and selfishness. I've been trying to understand those around me more. Why some of them feel racist and empathethicless rhetoric is appropriate and how I can help them escape these thought prisons instead of just disliking and ignoring them. I've dropped quite a few clients over these issues recently and shunned others instead of speaking up. Hoping to apply lessons learned to improve how I approach these situations going forward. I found myself hiding in cannabis's comfortable glow but issues need addressing

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    5 out of 5 stars
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  • JHM
  • 2020-04-23

My new Bible

This is the summary of a life's worth of research from multiple disciplines. Fundamental in understanding how humans do what they do.

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    5 out of 5 stars
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A must read!

Robert Sapolsky is a man who knows how to deliver the message without any extra mumbo jumbo, the book has been a real eye opener and puts into perspective a variety of human behaviour at our best and worst. A must read for anyone trying to further their knowledge of biology and how it interacts with the environment to cause our behaviours. Beautifully written and well narrated!

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    5 out of 5 stars
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Fantastic

Excellent writer and scientist. Lots of humour in the book as well, which makes it easy to listen to/read.

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  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Modern, Cited, Enthralling.

Behave is a 𝙛𝙪𝙣𝙙𝙖𝙢𝙚𝙣𝙩𝙖𝙡 read for anyone who wants to develop an ability to understand critical issues without their ego getting in the way. Profound insights backed by countless studies are brought to life by Sapolsky's charming humor, Behave ticks every box to create a non-ficiton vital for humanity's evolution.

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