POPULAR SCIENCE I COGNITIVE SCIENCE

"A provocative alternative to the standard narrative about evolution..... Henrich's book is immensely ambitious, informative, and important.

-GLENN ALTSCHULER, Psychology Today

Humans are a puzzling species. On one hand, we struggle to survive on our own in the wild, often failing to overcome even basic challenges, like obtaining food, building shelters, or avoiding predators. On the other hand, human groups have produced ingenious technologies, sophisticated languages, and complex institutions that have permitted us to successfully expand into a vast range of diverse environments. What has enabled us to dominate the globe while remaining virtually helpless as lone individuals? In this book, Joseph Henrich shows that the secret of our success lies not in our innate intelligence but in our collective brains—in the ability of human groups to socially interconnect and learn from one another over generations. Tracking clues from our ancient past to the present, The Secret of Our Success explores how the evolution of our cultural and social natures produced a collective intelligence that explains our species' immense success and the origins of human uniqueness.

"Henrich draws on his far-flung ethnographic field studies and the work of colleagues to illustrate the adaptive power of human culture."

— The Scientist

"Limber and lucid."

-BARBARA KISER, Nature

JOSEPH HENRICH is professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard University. He is a coauthor of Why Humans Cooperate and a coeditor of Experimenting with Social Norms.