THE SOCIAL CONQUEST OF EARTH
Published by W.W. Norton & Co.
Publication date: April 9, 2012
Publisher’s description:
From the most celebrated heir to Darwin comes a groundbreaking book on evolution, the summa work of Edward O. Wilson’s legendary career.
Where did we come from? What are we? Where are we going? In a generational work of clarity and passion, one of our greatest living scientists directly addresses these three fundamental questions of religion, philosophy, and science while “overturning the famous theory that evolution naturally encourages creatures to put family first” (Discover magazine). Refashioning the story of human evolution in a work that is certain to generate headlines, Wilson draws on his remarkable knowledge of biology and social behavior to show that group selection, not kin selection, is the primary driving force of human evolution. He proves that history makes no sense without prehistory, and prehistory makes no sense without biology. Demonstrating that the sources of morality, religion, and the creative arts are fundamentally biological in nature, Wilson presents us with the clearest explanation ever produced as to the origin of the human condition and why it resulted in our domination of the Earth’s biosphere. 90 illustrations.
Wilson’s newest theory…could transform our understanding of human nature—and provide hope for our stewardship of the planet…. [His] new book is not limited to the discussion of evolutionary biology, but ranges provocatively through the humanities…. Its impact on the social sciences could be as great as its importance for biology, advancing human self-understanding in ways typically associated with the great philosophers.”
—Howard W. French
The Atlantic
Once again, Ed Wilson has written a book combining the qualities that have brought his previous books Pulitzer Prizes and millions of readers: a big but simple question, powerful explanations, magisterial knowledge of the sciences and humanities, and beautiful writing understandable to a wide public.”
—Jared Diamond
Pulitzer-Prize-winning author of Guns, Germs and Steel
E. O. Wilson’s passionate curiosity—the hallmark of his remarkable career—has led him to these urgent reflections on the human condition. At the core of The Social Conquest of Earth is the unresolved, unresolvable tension in our species between selfishness and altruism. Wilson brilliantly analyzes the force, at once creative and destructive, of our biological inheritance and daringly advances a grand theory of the origins of human culture. This is a wonderful book for anyone interested in the intersection of science and the humanities.”
–Stephen Greenblatt
author of The Swerve: How the World Became Modern
*****
WHY WE ARE HERE: MOBILE AND THE SPIRIT OF A SOUTHERN CITY
Published by W.W. Norton & Co.
Publication date: September 15, 2012
People must belong to a tribe; they yearn to have a purpose larger than themselves. We are obliged by the deepest drives of the human spirit to make ourselves more than animated dust, and we must have a story to tell about where we came from, and why we are here.”
–E.O. Wilson, from Consilience
For E. O. Wilson, one of the world’s greatest scientists, writers, and synthesizers of knowledge, Mobile, Alabama is home ground. Many of Wilson’s significant early memories were formed in Mobile and along the surrounding Gulf Coast. Mobile is the site of his ancestral home, a place at once deeply familiar and at the same time so utterly changed since his childhood as to be full of mystery.
At the age of eighty Wilson returned to Mobile to reexamine the territory of his early years, to see the changes that have occurred in the physical and social landscape, and to reflect on some of the broad themes – the structures of human nature, the complexity of the natural world, the necessity of conservation – that have captivated him for a lifetime.
In Mobile, Wilson collaborated with fellow southerner, Alex Harris, a distinguished American photographer. Harris used his camera to evoke Wilson’s world. He paid special attention to the some of the themes evoked in Wilson’s novel Anthill, from the rites and rituals of the old aristocratic families living on the Azalea trail, to the often invisible but deeply connected relationship between the natural and man-made world. Wilson conducted pioneering research on Mobile’s history and drew on his own experiences and deep knowledge of the region to write a text that cuts more deeply than a traditional documentary description about a place. Wilson and Harris worked together to create a new hybrid literary form, a fusion of previously unconnected information, a book that is part memoir, part documentary, and part social and natural history. Together they express Mobile’s impact on the senses, capture its mood and its ambience and – all together, if you will – its spirit.
With words and photographs Wilson and Harris have collaborated to tell the story of Mobile, Alabama. But by implication they chronicle more than the life of this mid-sized American City. Together they evoke a more universal story of where we all come from, of why we are here.
