This generously illustrated book tells the story of the human family, showing how our species' physical traits and behaviors evolved over millions of years as our ancestors adapted to dramatic environmental changes.

An acclaimed biologist discusses how morality, religion, and the creative arts are biological in nature and defends his theory that the origin of the human condition is due to group, not family, selection.

A National Geographic Best Book of the Year In our unique genomes, every one of us carries the story of our species-births, deaths, disease, war, famine, migration, and a lot of sex. But those stories have always been locked away-until now. Who are our ancestors? Where did they come from? Geneticists have suddenly become historians, and the hard evidence in our DNA has completely upended what we thought we knew about ourselves. Acclaimed science...

"When homo sapiens made their entrance 100,000 years ago they were confronted by a wide range of other early humans--homo erectus, who walked better and used fire; homo habilis who used tools; and of course the Neanderthals, who were brawny and strong. But shortly after their arrival, something happened that vaulted the species forward and made them the indisputable masters of the planet. This book is devoted to revealing just what that difference...

Part memoir, part scientific investigation, Racing the Clock is the book biologist and natural historian Bernd Heinrich has been waiting his entire life to write. A dedicated and accomplished marathon (and ultra-marathon) runner who won his first marathon at age thirty-nine, Heinrich looks deeply at running, aging, and the body, exploring the unresolved relationship between metabolism, diet, exercise, and age. Why do some bodies age differently than...

There are so many odd parts of the human body, each page of this volume is able to reveal fascinating adaptations of the body readers didn?t even know they wanted to know!

Have you ever wondered why the human body looks the way it does? Why we walk on two legs instead of four? Why we can see in color but have a lousy sense of smell? Your Inner Fish delves deep into the past to answer questions like these. The three-part series reveals a startling truth: Hidden within the human body is a story of life on Earth. Based on a best-selling book by evolutionary biologist Neil Shubin, this scientific adventure story takes viewers...

Have you ever wondered why the human body looks the way it does? Why we walk on two legs instead of four? Why we can see in color but have a lousy sense of smell? Your Inner Fish delves deep into the past to answer questions like these. The three-part series reveals a startling truth: Hidden within the human body is a story of life on Earth. Based on a best-selling book by evolutionary biologist Neil Shubin, this scientific adventure story takes viewers...

Ramsay can feel his brain changing--and his body, too. He's becoming something other than himself. Maybe even something other than human. As he sets out to discover who did this to him, and why, his transformation threatens everything: his family, his job, even his freedom. Because the truth of what's happened to him is more disturbing than he could possibly imagine. His DNA has been rewritten with a genetic-engineering breakthrough beyond anything...