The Social Conquest of Earth

Based on a lifetime of pioneering research, preeminent naturalist Edward O. Wilson gives us a new history of human evolution, presented in an elegant and provocative narrative that promises to have reverberations in fields as diverse as anthropology and social psychology, neuroscience and 21st-century intellectual and religious history. Wilson begins by addressing three "fundamental questions" of religion and philosophy that have fascinated thinkers for centuries: Where did we come from? What are we? Where are we going? Writing that "the origin of modern humanity was a stroke of luck, good for our species for a while, bad for most of the rest of life forever," Wilson traces the rise of Homo sapiens from its infancy, drawing on his remarkable knowledge of biology and social behavior to present us with the clearest explanation ever produced as to the origin of the human condition. Wilson also reveals how "group selection" can be the only model for explaining man's origins and domination, and warns that it has now accelerated--through unregulated and untrammeled growth--to such a point that the planet as we know it is being threatened.--From publisher description.