The Darwin Awards Next Evolution

The Darwin Awards Next Evolution
Author: Wendy Northcutt
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 328
Release: 2008
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 9780525950851

Features examples of people whose lack of common sense resulted in their demise, in a tribute to how the evolutionary process is improved when individuals of questionable intelligence accidentally remove themselves from the gene pool.

A Most Interesting Problem

A Most Interesting Problem
Author: Jeremy DeSilva
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Total Pages: 288
Release: 2022-11-29
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0691242062

Leading scholars take stock of Darwin's ideas about human evolution in the light of modern science In 1871, Charles Darwin published The Descent of Man, a companion to Origin of Species in which he attempted to explain human evolution, a topic he called "the highest and most interesting problem for the naturalist." A Most Interesting Problem brings together twelve world-class scholars and science communicators to investigate what Darwin got right—and what he got wrong—about the origin, history, and biological variation of humans. Edited by Jeremy DeSilva and with an introduction by acclaimed Darwin biographer Janet Browne, A Most Interesting Problem draws on the latest discoveries in fields such as genetics, paleontology, bioarchaeology, anthropology, and primatology. This compelling and accessible book tackles the very subjects Darwin explores in Descent, including the evidence for human evolution, our place in the family tree, the origins of civilization, human races, and sex differences. A Most Interesting Problem is a testament to how scientific ideas are tested and how evidence helps to structure our narratives about human origins, showing how some of Darwin's ideas have withstood more than a century of scrutiny while others have not. A Most Interesting Problem features contributions by Janet Browne, Jeremy DeSilva, Holly Dunsworth, Agustín Fuentes, Ann Gibbons, Yohannes Haile-Selassie, Brian Hare, John Hawks, Suzana Herculano-Houzel, Kristina Killgrove, Alice Roberts, and Michael J. Ryan.

The Descent of Man

The Descent of Man
Author: Grayson Perry
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 162
Release: 2017-05-30
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1524705306

What does it mean to be male in the 21st Century? Award-winning artist Grayson Perry explores what masculinity is: from sex to power, from fashion to career prospects, and what it could become—with illustrations throughout. In this witty and necessary new book, artist Grayson Perry trains his keen eye on the world of men to ask, what sort of man would make the world a better place? What would happen if we rethought the macho, outdated version of manhood, and embraced a different ideal? In the current atmosphere of bullying, intolerance and misogyny, demonstrated in the recent Trump versus Clinton presidential campaign, The Descent of Man is a timely and essential addition to current conversations around gender. Apart from gaining vast new wardrobe options, the real benefit might be that a newly fitted masculinity will allow men to have better relationships—and that’s happiness, right? Grayson Perry admits he’s not immune from the stereotypes himself—yet his thoughts on everything from power to physical appearance, from emotions to a brand new Manifesto for Men, are shot through with honesty, tenderness, and the belief that, for everyone to benefit, updating masculinity has to be something men decide to do themselves. They have nothing to lose but their hang-ups.

One Long Argument

One Long Argument
Author: Ernst Mayr
Publisher: Harvard University Press
Total Pages: 228
Release: 1991
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 9780674639065

The great evolutionist Mayr elucidates the subtleties of Darwin’s thought and that of his contemporaries and intellectual heirs—A. R. Wallace, T. H. Huxley, August Weisman, Asa Gray. Mayr has achieved a remarkable distillation of Darwin’s scientific thought and his legacy to twentieth-century biology.

The Evolution of Beauty

The Evolution of Beauty
Author: Richard O. Prum
Publisher: Anchor
Total Pages: 436
Release: 2017-05-09
Genre: Science
ISBN: 0385537220

A FINALIST FOR THE PULITZER PRIZE NAMED A BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR BY THE NEW YORK TIMES BOOK REVIEW, SMITHSONIAN, AND WALL STREET JOURNAL A major reimagining of how evolutionary forces work, revealing how mating preferences—what Darwin termed "the taste for the beautiful"—create the extraordinary range of ornament in the animal world. In the great halls of science, dogma holds that Darwin's theory of natural selection explains every branch on the tree of life: which species thrive, which wither away to extinction, and what features each evolves. But can adaptation by natural selection really account for everything we see in nature? Yale University ornithologist Richard Prum—reviving Darwin's own views—thinks not. Deep in tropical jungles around the world are birds with a dizzying array of appearances and mating displays: Club-winged Manakins who sing with their wings, Great Argus Pheasants who dazzle prospective mates with a four-foot-wide cone of feathers covered in golden 3D spheres, Red-capped Manakins who moonwalk. In thirty years of fieldwork, Prum has seen numerous display traits that seem disconnected from, if not outright contrary to, selection for individual survival. To explain this, he dusts off Darwin's long-neglected theory of sexual selection in which the act of choosing a mate for purely aesthetic reasons—for the mere pleasure of it—is an independent engine of evolutionary change. Mate choice can drive ornamental traits from the constraints of adaptive evolution, allowing them to grow ever more elaborate. It also sets the stakes for sexual conflict, in which the sexual autonomy of the female evolves in response to male sexual control. Most crucially, this framework provides important insights into the evolution of human sexuality, particularly the ways in which female preferences have changed male bodies, and even maleness itself, through evolutionary time. The Evolution of Beauty presents a unique scientific vision for how nature's splendor contributes to a more complete understanding of evolution and of ourselves.

The Darwin Awards: The Descent of Man

The Darwin Awards: The Descent of Man
Author: Wendy Northcutt
Publisher: Running Press
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2005-11-29
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 9780762425617

In this volume, men meet their inner idiots as they test their testosterone levels by petting sharks, kissing snakes, chasing beer cans, and juggling hand grenades. Only when it's too late do these would-be Alpha males realize that they're actually Omega males, providing ample proof of a missing “Why?” chromosome.

The Darwin Awards Countdown to Extinction

The Darwin Awards Countdown to Extinction
Author: Wendy Northcutt
Publisher: Penguin
Total Pages: 318
Release: 2010-10-28
Genre: Humor
ISBN: 1101444657

The hilarious New York Times bestselling phenomenon and the perfect funny gift! The Darwin Awards are more than just a brand. They're a pop culture phenomenon. With six books and a website that draws in more than a million unique visitors every month, the Darwin Awards rivals The Onion and The Simpsons as one of the biggest humor franchises in the world. Fully illustrated and featuring all-new tales of the marvelously macabre, The Darwin Awards Countdown to Extinction chronicles the astonishing acts of individuals who have taken a swan dive into the shallow end of the gene pool. From attaching a five-horsepower engine to a barstool, to hammering a metal hook into an explosive device, to using a taser to treat a snake bite, these gloriously gruesome incidents prove that the countdown (to human extinction) is well under way. And we won't exit this mortal coil without one last laugh.

The Book of Signs

The Book of Signs
Author: Rudolf Koch
Publisher: Courier Corporation
Total Pages: 114
Release: 2013-12-31
Genre: Art
ISBN: 0486153908

Famed German type designer renders 493 classified and documented illustrations divided into 14 categories, including general signs, Christian signs, astronomical signs, the four elements, house and holding marks, runes, and more.

Darwin and the Making of Sexual Selection

Darwin and the Making of Sexual Selection
Author: Evelleen Richards
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 704
Release: 2017-04-27
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 022643690X

Sexual selection, or the struggle for mates, was of considerable strategic importance to Darwin s theory of evolution as he first outlined it in the "Origin of Species," and later, in the "Descent of Man," it took on a much wider role. There, Darwin s exhaustive elaboration of sexual selection throughout the animal kingdom was directed to substantiating his view that human racial and sexual differences, not just physical differences but certain mental and moral differences, had evolved primarily through the action of sexual selection. It was the culmination of a lifetime of intellectual effort and commitment. Yet even though he argued its validity with a great array of critics, sexual selection went into abeyance with Darwin s death, not to be revived until late in the twentieth century, and even today it remains a controversial theory. In unfurling the history of sexual selection, Evelleen Richards brings to vivid life Darwin the man, not the myth, and the social and intellectual roots of his theory building."

Darwin the Writer

Darwin the Writer
Author: George Levine
Publisher: OUP Oxford
Total Pages: 310
Release: 2011-06-30
Genre: Literary Criticism
ISBN: 0191620629

Charles Darwin's On the Origin of Species, arguably the most important book written in English in the nineteenth century, transformed the way we looked at the world. It is usually assumed that this is because the idea of evolution was so staggeringly powerful. Prize-winning author George Levine suggests that much of its influence was due, in fact, to its artistry; to the way it was written. Alive with metaphor, vivid descriptions, twists, hesitations, personal exclamations, and humour, the prose is imbued with the sorts of tensions, ambivalences, and feelings characteristic of great literature. Although it is certainly a work of "science," the Origin is equally a work of "literature," at home in the company of celebrated Victorian novels such as Middlemarch and Bleak House, books that give us a unique yet recognisable sense of what the world is really like, while not being literally 'true'. Darwin's enormous cultural success, Levine contends, depended as much on the construction of his argument and the nature of his language, as it did on the power of his ideas and his evidence. By challenging the dominant reading of his work, this impassioned and energetic book gives us a Darwin who is comic rather than tragic, ebullient rather than austere, and who takes delight in the wild and fluid entanglement of things.