Here’s my latest Amazon review, for “Bozo Sapiens” by Michael Kaplan and Ellen Kaplan:
Explaining ourselves
Why are humans the way they are? Why do we make such stupid (and obvious) mistakes all the time? Why are we so bad at estimating probability? Why do we fall for scams? As the Kaplans ask, “Is it instinctive for people – our doltish enemies, our spontaneous selves – to get things wrong?”
Yes, this is another book about evolutionary psychology, and one of the most approachable that I’ve encountered. It casts its net wide; after a brief introduction, we get four chapters on topics as diverse as economics; perception, language and thinking; error in action; and social structures and relations. The penultimate chapter, “Fresh off the Pleistocene Bus”, considers the difference and (more important) continuity between us and our ancestors from 70,000 years ago. The authors close with “Living Right”: the origins of our sense of what is right, civil, moral, and just, and the way in which “we accommodate the tensions between our simple primate emotions and our bewildering world through the connective tissue of culture.”
This is a delightful book. It nicely complements and extends Dennis Dutton’s outstanding The Art Instinct: Beauty, Pleasure, and Human Evolution. As I was reading it, I worried slightly that the Kaplans had spread themselves too thin, and were attempting to bring in too many topics. By the time I finished, those fears had disappeared. I think they’ve struck just the right balance.
The advance reading copy that I had did not include an index; I’m not sure if one is planned. It did, however, include copious end-notes, and they are uniformly good. Perhaps footnotes would have been better, simply because they’re less easily overlooked. But this is a minor point.
Highly recommended.