Description
Book SynopsisIn the 1960s biologists and social scientists engaged in a public debate about human nature. The questionwhether humans are innately aggressive or cooperativeeventually receded, but the oppositional naturenurture binary created in the course of the debate left a lasting legacy that would underpin subsequent discussions of human behavior.
Trade ReviewInformative, accessible, and filled with fascinating portraits of her large cast of characters, Weidman’s book makes an important contribution to our understanding of how ideas about nature and nurture were constructed, contested, and disseminated in the United States between the 1950s and 1980s. -- Glenn C. Altschuler * Psychology Today *
Weidman deserves praise for her rigorous historiography. The book reads so well and smoothly that it could be approached by anyone…[An] excellent piece of scholarship. -- Alejandro Fábregas-Tejeda * H-Net Reviews *
Weidman masterfully examines the quest for humankind’s innate, biological nature in the years following the Second World War. With compelling scientific storytelling, the author chronicles how charismatic individuals shaped selective scientific findings into a bloody vision of aggressive
Homo sapiens in the public mind. It is as much a rich historical account as it is a cautionary tale, considering the virality of current distortions of science. -- B. Natterson-Horowitz * Quarterly Review of Biology *
Nadine Weidman has written a brilliant and elegant book. If you’ve ever wondered about the real reasons human beings act one way or another—and why this search for our root instincts has maintained persistent prominence throughout time—you now have the ideal guide. -- Rebecca Lemov, author of
Database of Dreams: The Lost Quest to Catalog HumanityWith exceptional scholarship and a compelling narrative, Nadine Weidman reveals how the science of an essentialized ‘human nature’ was constructed, popularized, and fought over in the 1950s through the 1980s. Focusing on the work of Konrad Lorenz, Ashley Montagu, Robert Ardrey, E. O. Wilson, and Ruth Hubbard, Weidman provides an important new understanding of the history of instinct, aggression, and ‘popular science.’ -- Andrew S. Winston, Professor Emeritus, University of Guelph
