Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Behave by Robert M Sapolsky is one of the most ambitious books on human behaviour written in recent years. Sapolsky, a Stanford neuroscientist and primatologist, walks the reader through a single act of behaviour from the millisecond before it happens through the evolutionary millennia that shaped it.

The book is long, dense, and entertaining. Sapolsky’s conversational footnotes are part of the pleasure.