Jean-Louis Dessalles explores the co-evolutionary paths of biology, culture, and the great human edifice of language, linking the evolution of the language to the general evolutionary history of humankind. He provides searchingly original answers to such fundamental paradoxes as to whether we acquired our greatest gift in order to talk or so as to be able to think, and as to why human beings should, as experience constantly confirms, contribute information for the well-being of others at their own expense and for no apparent gain: which if this is one of language's main functions appears to make its possession, in Darwinian terms, a disadvantage.

The Complete Book of Greed: The Strange and Amazing History of Human Excess
Money mania: Рассказ о том, как они рулят миром, как отдельные личности жаждут наживы, и что в деньгах сытости нет. Забавно, остроумно, и даже местами - трагично.

Goldberg reveals the quirks and characters of famous misers, gamblers, investors, spendthrifts, spenders, gold diggers, and billionaires while he talks about the reality of greed. He also philosophizes that greed is unrelenting because it's really a search for spiritual fulfillment and cannot be satisfied through the accumulation of material possessions. His anecdotal format results in an entertaining book, while his scary stories of the effect of greed almost make the reader glad not to be rich.

 

Child and Adolescent Psychiatry - A Comprehensive Textbook 3rd.ed

Human beings are complex living organisms that can be characterized by their appearance and behavior ateach point in the life cycle. Many of these characteristics are uniquely human, such as the array of languages that facilitate interpersonal communication and permit a meaningful interplay of ideas and emotions. Other characteristics, such as affection and aggression, are less distinctive and place our species as one among many that populate the earth. Scientific advances over the past 150 years clearly indicate that hereditary factors are transmitted from generation to generation and account for much of the observed variation among and within species. Although the complexities of human existence cannot be reduced simply to the effects of genes, it is inescapable that genetic factors provide the biological basis for many of our potentialities and vulnerabilities as human beings .

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Roots of Human Behavior - TTC
(12 lectures, 30 minutes/lecture)
Course No. 168
Taught by Barbara J. King
The College of William and Mary
Ph.D., University of Oklahoma

While human history is usually studied from the perspective of a few hundred years, anthropologists consider deeper causes for the ways we act. In this course, anthropologist Barbara J. King uses her wealth of research experience to open a window of understanding for you into the legacy left by our primate past. These lectures look for the roots of human behavior in the behavior of other primates: monkeys, apes, and human ancestors.
In these lectures, you explore such questions as:
• Are language and technology unique to humans?
• Have human love and loyalty developed from emotions of our primate cousins?
• Do the ways in which human males and females relate to each other come from our primate past?
• Have we inherited a biological tendency for aggression?
• How much of our behavioral, cognitive, and cultural identity have we inherited from our closest living relatives?
• How can the study of monkeys and apes lead us to a fuller picture of who we are?

Since its first publication in 1974, USE YOUR HEAD has acquired the status of a classic. Translated into 12 languages, with a worldwide sales in excess of 250,000. Tony Buzan's books have helped scores of people understand the true capacity of human brain, realize and develop many of the abilities that normally lie dormant.