2,042 words
Geoffrey Miller
Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior
New York: Viking, 2009
When I was asked to review this book, I half groaned because I was sure of what to expect and I also knew it was not going to broaden my knowledge in a significant way. From my earlier reading up on other, but tangentially related subject areas (e.g., advertising), I already knew, and it seemed more than obvious to me, that consumer behavior had an evolutionary basis. Read more …
In Defense of Kony
“Man developed in Africa. He has not continued to do so there.” — P. J. O’Rourke
Andrew Hamilton recently reviewed Lawrence H. Keeley’s anthropological treatise War Before Civilization. Keeley’s book delivers an excellent (and very accessible) debunking of the popular notion that precivilized humans were more pacific than civilized ones. They weren’t. Read more …