A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History
by Nicholas Wade
- Used
- very good
- Condition
- Very Good/Very Good
- ISBN 10
- 1594204462
- ISBN 13
- 9781594204463
- Seller
-
Newtown, New South Wales, Australia
Payment Methods Accepted
About This Item
Synopsis
Drawing on startling new evidence from the human genome, an explosive new account of the genetic basis of race and its role in the human story Fewer ideas have been more toxic or harmful than the idea of the biological reality of race, and with it the idea that humans of different races are biologically different from one another. For this understandable reason, the idea has been banished from polite academic conversation. Arguing that race is more than just a social construct can get a scholar run out of town, or at least off campus, on a rail. Human evolution, the consensus view insists, ended in prehistory. Inconveniently, as Nicholas Wade argues in A Troublesome Inheritance , the consensus view cannot be right. And in fact, we know that populations have changed in the past few thousand yearsto be lactose tolerant, for example, and to survive at high altitudes. Race is not a bright-line distinction; by definition it means that the more human populations are kept apart, the more they evolve their own distinct traits under the selective pressure known as Darwinian evolution. For many thousands of years, most human populations stayed where they were and grew distinct, not just in outward appearance but in deeper senses as well. Wade, the longtime journalist covering genetic advances for The New York Times , draws widely on the work of scientists who have made crucial breakthroughs in establishing the reality of recent human evolution. The most provocative claims in this book involve the genetic basis of human social habits. What we might call middle-class social traitsthrift, docility, nonviolencehave been slowly but surely inculcated genetically within agrarian societies, Wade argues. These values” obviously had a strong cultural component, but Wade points to evidence that agrarian societies evolved away from hunter-gatherer societies in some crucial respects. Also controversial are his findings regarding the genetic basis of traits we associate with intelligence, such as literacy and numeracy, in certain ethnic populations, including the Chinese and Ashkenazi Jews. Wade believes deeply in the fundamental equality of all human peoples. He also believes that science is best served by pursuing the truth without fear, and if his mission to arrive at a coherent summa of what the new genetic science does and does not tell us about race and human history leads straight into a minefield, then so be it. This will not be the last word on the subject, but it will begin a powerful and overdue conversation.
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Details
- Bookseller
- Goulds Book Arcade (AU)
- Bookseller's Inventory #
- 173315
- Title
- A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History
- Author
- Nicholas Wade
- Format/Binding
- Book Condition
- Used - Very Good
- Jacket Condition
- Very Good
- Binding
- Hardback
- ISBN 10
- 1594204462
- ISBN 13
- 9781594204463
- Publisher
- Penguin Press
- Place of Publication
- New York, N. Y.
- Date Published
- 2014
- Keywords
- [[540G HUMAN HISTORY ANTHROPOLOGY
Terms of Sale
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About the Seller
Goulds Book Arcade
About Goulds Book Arcade
Since 1989 Goulds Book Arcade was at the city end of King St, Newtown, but moved in late 2018.
The shop is now located at 536 King St.
That's directly opposite Alice St in south Newtown, near the New Theatre.
If you want to pick up ordered items from the shop please contact us first as the listed items are not stored at the shop.
Glossary
Some terminology that may be used in this description includes:
- Jacket
- Sometimes used as another term for dust jacket, a protective and often decorative wrapper, usually made of paper which wraps...