The Top 10 Books to REALLY Learn About Leadership

I just attended the 21st annual National Leadership Symposium at the University of Richmond, which is an intensive 3-day workshop for directors and faculty/academic staff who are running university-based leadership programs. I was one of three faculty scholars who presented throughout the conference, and I was asked many very good questions. The one question that really stumped me was, "If someone really wanted to get a good grasp on the academic field of leadership, which books would you recommend?" I can't believe that I was blindsided by a question that I should have been well prepared to answer. [Moreover, I can't believe that I haven't been asked this question before!]
So, here is my list of books that will give an educated person a good grasp of the study of leadership and what we have learned from over 100 years of leadership research. Realize that these are academic books, not the easy-to-digest popular books on leadership.
1. Bass's Handbook of Leadership (4th edition). Authors: Bernard M. Bass with Ruth Bass (2008). New York: Free Press.
This is the "bible" for serious students of leadership. No one knew more about leadership than the late Bernie Bass, whose research career spanned 7 decades. At more than 1500 pages, this is the most comprehensive treatment of leadership research that exists.
2. Leadership. Author: James MacGregor Burns. (1978). New York: Harper Collins.
Presidential scholar and biographer, and Pulitzer Prize winner, Jim Burns, wrote this inspirational book that distinguished between what he called "transforming" and "transactional" leaders. It led to the development of the theory of transformational leadership, spawned thousands of research studies, and helped revive (and diversify) the study of leadership.
3. The Nature of Leadership. (2nd edition). Editors: David V. Day & John Antonakis. (2011). SAGE press.
This new edited book gives a scholarly, in-depth review of the core areas of leadership research in management and psychology. The collection provides a good "base" for understanding the latest empirical research on leadership.
4. Organizational Culture and Leadership. (4th edition). Author: Edgar H. Schein. (2010). Jossey Bass.

This book is more about organizational culture and how leaders can affect and are affected by culture. Schein's foundational work in psychology, organizational development, and leadership provides breadth to the understanding of leadership and the larger context of organizational leadership.
5. The Practice of Leadership. Editors: Jay A. Conger & Ronald E. Riggio (2007). Jossey-Bass.
This book brought together the leading scholars in each area of leadership research, from leader selection to leader development, to leading teams and leading under crisis. Each chapter author draws on the research to give practicing leaders brief takeaways to help them be more effective.
Best Guide to Personal Leader Development
6. Full Range Leadership Development. (2nd edition). Author: Bruce J. Avolio. SAGE press.
Avolio is one of the top leadership scholars. This guide to personal leader development is steeped in research and in Avolio's own consulting work and life experiences. It shows that leadership is complex and development is hard to do, but clearly lays out the path to leadership development.
Best Collected Readings on Leadership (Tie)
7. The Leader's Companion. Editor: J. Thomas Wren. (1995). Free Press. & Leadership: Essential Selections on Power, Authority, and Influence. Editor: Barbara Kellerman. (2010). McGraw-Hill.
An older and a new collection of classic writings on leadership, both with editor introductions and explanatory text.
Best Leadership Textbooks
8-10. Leadership: Science & Practice. (5th edition) (2010). Author: Peter Northouse. SAGE press.
Leadership in Organizations. (7th edition). (2009). Author: Gary Yukl. Prentice-Hall.
Leadership: Enhancing the Lessons of Experience. (7th edition). (2010). Richard L. Hughes, Ginnett, & Curphy. McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
These are the 3 best texts in leadership that I have found, with Northouse being more accessible (and briefer), Yukl more business-oriented and academic, and Hughes, et al., is more like a traditional textbook with exercises.

Feathers: The Evolution of a Natural Miracle

Feathers are an evolutionary marvel: aerodynamic, insulating, beguiling. They date back more than 100 million years. Yet their story has never been fully told.
In Feathers, biologist Thor Hanson details a sweeping natural history, as feathers have been used to fly, protect, attract, and adorn through time and place. Applying the research of paleontologists, ornithologists, biologists, engineers, and even art historians, Hanson asks: What are feathers? How did they evolve? What do they mean to us?
Engineers call feathers the most efficient insulating material ever discovered, and they are at the root of biology's most enduring debate. They silence the flight of owls and keep penguins dry below the ice. They have decorated queens, jesters, and priests. And they have inked documents from the Constitution to the novels of Jane Austen.
Feathers is a captivating and beautiful exploration of this most enchanting object.

Winner-Take-All Politics

Author: Jacob Hacker and Paul Pierson

A groundbreaking work that identifies the real culprit behind one of the great economic crimes of our time— the growing inequality of incomes between the vast majority of Americans and the richest of the rich.
We all know that the very rich have gotten a lot richer these past few decades while most Americans haven't. In fact, the exorbitantly paid have continued to thrive during the current economic crisis, even as the rest of Americans have continued to fall behind. Why do the "haveit- alls" have so much more? And how have they managed to restructure the economy to reap the lion's share of the gains and shift the costs of their new economic playground downward, tearing new holes in the safety net and saddling all of us with increased debt and risk? Lots of so-called experts claim to have solved this great mystery, but no one has really gotten to the bottom of it—until now.
In their lively and provocative Winner-Take-All Politics, renowned political scientists Jacob S. Hacker and Paul Pierson demonstrate convincingly that the usual suspects—foreign trade and financial globalization, technological changes in the workplace, increased education at the top—are largely innocent of the charges against them. Instead, they indict an unlikely suspect and take us on an entertaining tour of the mountain of evidence against the culprit. The guilty party is American politics. Runaway inequality and the present economic crisis reflect what government has done to aid the rich and what it has not done to safeguard the interests of the middle class. The winner-take-all economy is primarily a result of winner-take-all politics.
In an innovative historical departure, Hacker and Pierson trace the rise of the winner-take-all economy back to the late 1970s when, under a Democratic president and a Democratic Congress, a major transformation of American politics occurred. With big business and conservative ideologues organizing themselves to undo the regulations and progressive tax policies that had helped ensure a fair distribution of economic rewards, deregulation got under way, taxes were cut for the wealthiest, and business decisively defeated labor in Washington. And this transformation continued under Reagan and the Bushes as well as under Clinton, with both parties catering to the interests of those at the very top. Hacker and Pierson's gripping narration of the epic battles waged during President Obama's first two years in office reveals an unpleasant but catalyzing truth: winner-take-all politics, while under challenge, is still very much with us.
Winner-Take-All Politics—part revelatory history, part political analysis, part intellectual journey— shows how a political system that traditionally has been responsive to the interests of the middle class has been hijacked by the superrich. In doing so, it not only changes how we think about American politics, but also points the way to rebuilding a democracy that serves the interests of the many rather than just those of the wealthy few.

The Decline and Fall of the American Republic

Author: Bruce Ackerman

The author shows how the institutional dynamics of the last half-century have transformed the American presidency into a potential platform for political extremism and lawlessness. Watergate, Iran-Contra, and the War on Terror are only symptoms of deeper pathologies. ­Ackerman points to a series of developments that have previously been treated independently of one another—from the rise of presidential primaries, to the role of pollsters and media gurus, to the centralization of power in White House czars, to the politicization of the military, to the manipulation of constitutional doctrine to justify presidential power-grabs. He shows how these different transformations can interact to generate profound constitutional crises in the twenty-first century—and then proposes a series of reforms that will minimize, if not eliminate, the risks going forward.
The book aims to begin a new constitutional debate. Americans should not suppose that Barack Obama’s centrism and constitutionalism will typify the presidencies of the twenty-first century. We should seize the present opportunity to confront deeper institutional pathologies before it is too late.

The Shadows of Consumption Consequences for the Global Environment

Author: Peter Dauvergne

The Shadows of Consumption gives a hard-hitting diagnosis: many of the earth's ecosystems and billions of its people are at risk from the consequences of rising consumption. Products ranging from cars to hamburgers offer conveniences and pleasures; but, as Peter Dauvergne makes clear, global political and economic processes displace the real costs of consumer goods into distant ecosystems, communities, and timelines, tipping into crisis people and places without the power to resist.

In The Shadows of Consumption, Peter Dauvergne maps the costs of consumption that remain hidden in the shadows cast by globalized corporations, trade, and finance. He traces the environmental consequences of five commodities: automobiles, gasoline, refrigerators, beef, and harp seals. In these fascinating histories we learn, for example, that American officials ignored warnings about the dangers of lead in gasoline in the 1920s; why China is now a leading producer of CFC-free refrigerators; and how activists were able to stop Canada's commercial seal hunt in the 1980s (but are unable to do so now).

Dauvergne's innovative analysis allows us to see why so many efforts to manage the global environment are failing even as environmentalism is slowly strengthening. He proposes a guiding principle of "balanced consumption" for both consumers and corporations. We know that we can make things better by driving a fuel-efficient car, eating locally grown food, and buying energy-efficient appliances; but these improvements are incremental, local, and insufficient. More crucial than our individual efforts to reuse and recycle will be reforms in the global political economy to reduce the inequalities of consumption and correct the imbalance between growing economies and environmental sustainability.

Talent Is Overrated: What Really Separates World-Class Performers from Everybody Else

Author: Geoff Colvin

One of the most popular Fortune articles in many years was a cover story called “What It Takes to Be Great.” Geoff Colvin offered new evidence that top performers in any field--from Tiger Woods and Winston Churchill to Warren Buffett and Jack Welch--are not determined by their inborn talents. Greatness doesn’t come from DNA but from practice and perseverance honed over decades.

And not just plain old hard work, like your grandmother might have advocated, but a very specific kind of work. The key is how you practice, how you analyze the results of your progress and learn from your mistakes, that enables you to achieve greatness.

Now Colvin has expanded his article with much more scientific background and real-world examples. He shows that the skills of business—negotiating deals, evaluating financial statements, and all the rest—obey the principles that lead to greatness, so that anyone can get better at them with the right kind of effort. Even the hardest decisions and interactions can be systematically improved.

This new mind-set, combined with Colvin’s practical advice, will change the way you think about your job and career—and will inspire you to achieve more in all you do

The Lever of Riches: Technological Creativity and Economic Progress

Author: Joel Mokyr
In a world of supercomputers, genetic engineering, and fiber optics, technological creativity is ever more the key to economic success. But why are some nations more creative than others, and why do some highly innovative societies--such as ancient China, or Britain in the industrial revolution--pass into stagnation?
Beginning with a fascinating, concise history of technological progress, Mokyr sets the background for his analysis by tracing the major inventions and innovations that have transformed society since ancient Greece and Rome. What emerges from this survey is often surprising: the classical world, for instance, was largely barren of new technology, the relatively backward society of medieval Europe bristled with inventions, and the period between the Reformation and the Industrial Revolution was one of slow and unspectacular progress in technology, despite the tumultuous developments associated with the Voyages of Discovery and the Scientific Revolution.
What were the causes of technological creativity? Mokyr distinguishes between the relationship of inventors and their physical environment--which determined their willingness to challenge nature--and the social environment, which determined the openness to new ideas. He discusses a long list of such factors, showing how they interact to help or hinder a nation's creativity, and then illustrates them by a number of detailed comparative studies, examining the differences between Europe and China, between classical antiquity and medieval Europe, and between Britain and the rest of Europe during the industrial revolution. He examines such aspects as the role of the state (the Chinese gave up a millenium-wide lead in shipping to the Europeans, for example, when an Emperor banned large ocean-going vessels), the impact of science, as well as religion, politics, and even nutrition. He questions the importance of such commonly-cited factors as the spill-over benefits of war, the abundance of natural resources, life expectancy, and labor costs.
Today, an ever greater number of industrial economies are competing in the global market, locked in a struggle that revolves around technological ingenuity. The Lever of Riches, with its keen analysis derived from a sweeping survey of creativity throughout history, offers telling insights into the question of how Western economies can maintain, and developing nations can unlock, their creative potential.

THE TENTH PARALLEL Dispatches From the Fault Line Between Christianity and Islam

Author: Eliza Griswold
The tenth parallel—the line of latitude seven hundred miles north of the equator—is a geographical and ideological front line where Christianity and Islam collide. More than half of the world’s 1.3 billion Muslims live along the tenth parallel; so do sixty percent of the world’s 2 billion Christians. Here, in the buzzing megacities and swarming jungles of Africa and Asia, is where the two religions meet; their encounter is shaping the future of each faith, and of whole societies as well.

An award-winning investigative journalist and poet, Eliza Griswold has spent the past seven years traveling between the equator and the tenth parallel: in Nigeria, the Sudan, and Somalia, and in Indonesia, Malaysia, and the Philippines. The stories she tells in The Tenth Parallel show us that religious conflicts are also conflicts about land, water, oil, and other natural resources, and that local and tribal issues are often shaped by religious ideas. Above all, she makes clear that, for the people she writes about, one’s sense of God is shaped by one’s place on earth; along the tenth parallel, faith is geographic and demographic.

An urgent examination of the relationship between faith and worldly power, The Tenth Parallel is an essential work about the conflicts over religion, nationhood and natural resources that will remake the world in the years to come.

The Big Questions: The Universe

Author: Stuart Clark
The Big Questions series enables renowned experts to tackle the 20 most fundamental and frequently asked questions of a major branch of science or philosophy. Each 3000-word essay simply and concisely examines a question that has eternally perplexed enquiring minds, providing answers from history's great thinkers. This ambitious project is a unique distillation of humanity's best ideas. In Big Questions: The Universe, Dr Stuart Clark tackles the 20 key questions of astronomy and cosmology: What is the universe? How big is the universe? How old is the universe? What are stars made from? How did the Universe form? Why do the planets stay in orbit? Was Einstein right? What are black holes? How did the Earth form? What were the first celestial objects? What is dark matter? What is dark energy? Are we really made from stardust? Is there life on Mars? Are there other intelligent beings? Can we travel through time and space? Can the laws of physics change? Are there alternative universes? What will be the fate of the universe? Is there cosmological evidence for God?

Stuart Clark's top 10 approachable astronomy books

1. The Edge of Physics by Anil Ananthaswamy

Part science, part travel book. Ananthaswamy searches for cosmological truth by visiting the often remote observatories and laboratories studying the universe. Ultimately, this story is an enchanting exploration of the author's quest to understand not just a little more about the universe, but a little more about his own place within it.

2. Galileo's Daughter by Dava Sobel

The most dramatic retelling of the Galileo story for a generation, and a rather tragic tale to boot. Sobel's memorable prose relies on letters between Galileo and his oldest daughter, a nun, to shine new light on the iconic astronomer. A masterful blend of history and astronomy.

3. The Book Nobody Read by Owen Gingerich

Gingerich's compelling narrative illuminates his quest to explore the cultural reception of Copernicus's revolutionary idea that the Earth orbited the sun and not vice versa. Gingerich also relates the difficulties of being an American researcher during the cold war, knowing that his quarry lay behind the iron curtain.

4. Lonely Hearts of the Cosmos by Dennis Overbye

This extended piece of top-class journalism captures astronomy as it is really practised in the corridors of academia and the lecture halls of conferences. Personal rivalries and personalities have as much to do with "progress" as having the right answer. Sprawling, complex and epic, it is also a page-turner.

5. Project Orion by George Dyson

How far will man go to reach the stars? Back in the 1950s, idealism was running high and a group of scientists and engineers gathered at The Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton, New Jersey. Their goal was to harness nuclear bombs to launch manned spacecraft. Utter madness but beautifully recounted by George Dyson, whose father was one of the misguided idealists.

6. Dragonfly by Bryan Burrough

Manned spaceflight rather than astronomy, but a vivid behind-the-scenes portrayal of America's participation in Russia's Mir space station. It strips away the PR gloss and builds a factual story that reads likes a near-future thriller. Gripping, with some genuinely jaw-dropping moments of drama.

7. The Sleepwalkers by Arthur Koestler

Dense and detailed, this is a book you may have to work at, but there are rich rewards for anyone who stays the course. It also grows better with each re-reading. Koestler weaves the greatest history of astronomy up to Newton ever written.

8. Decoding the Universe by Charles Seife

Forget matter and energy, space and time, Seife argues that the most fundamental property of the universe is the information it contains. Until we accept this, we are stymied from further progress, rather like a baby playing with the box instead of the gift inside. Provocative and interesting, it challenges you to think differently.

9. The Very First Light by John C Mather and John Boslough

A thrilling tale of big science within Nasa, this is the story behind the mission that discovered the "seeds" of today's galaxies in the faint glow of the very first light left over from the creation of the universe.

10. Black Holes and Time Warps: Einstein's Outrageous Legacy by Kip S Thorne

A fantastic tale of the consequences of relativity rather than the development of it. Black holes are predicted by relativity and are the weirdest things imaginable, so weird that astronomers tried for decades to wish them away. Even today, they still don't know what they are. Cracking story, cracking science.

Merchants of Doubt: How a Handful of Scientists Obscured the Truth on Issues from Tobacco Smoke to Global Warming

Author:  Naomi Oreskes, Erik M. Conway

Story about the misuse of science to mislead the public on matters ranging from the risks of smoking to the reality of global warming. The people the authors accuse in this carefully documented book are themselves scientists—mostly physicists, former cold warriors who now serve a conservative agenda, and vested interests like the tobacco industry. The authors name these scientists—all with powerful connections in government and the media—including Robert Jastrow, Frederick Seitz, and S. Fred Singer. Seven compelling chapters detail seven issues (acid rain, the dangers of smoking and secondhand smoke, the ozone hole, global warming, the Strategic Defense Initiative, and the banning of DDT) in which this group aimed to sow seeds of public doubt on matters of settled science. They did so by casting aspersions on the science and the scientists who produce it. Oreskes, a professor of history and science studies at UC–San Diego, and science writer Conway also emphasize how journalists and Internet bloggers uncritically repeat these charges.

The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years

Author: Sonia Shah
Malaria has been a global scourge since the Ice Age, and despite the fact that it's treatable, it still kills about 1 million people a year. Scientists and physicians have worked for decades upon decades to eliminate the disease, but after tens of thousands of years, it's beginning to look unkillable. Malaria has been eradicated in the United States for nearly 60 years, but the disease has still worked its way inextricably into our cultures and identities. Many older Americans, particularly in the South, remember chasing after trucks spraying the (now banned) insecticide DDT as children, playing in the cool mist on hot summer days. Even one of the world's best-known soft drinks, tonic water, gets its name from the mixer's original use as a treatment for malaria (it contains quinine, which is still used, in larger doses, to treat the disease).
There have been deadlier, scarier and more stubborn diseases, but few that have affected human evolution and global culture as much as malaria has. In The Fever: How Malaria Has Ruled Humankind for 500,000 Years, journalist Sonia Shah provides an absorbing overview of the causes, treatments and effects of the disease, from the birth of the Plasmodium falciparum parasite in Africa thousands of years ago to global health initiatives of the past decade. In previous books, Shah has chronicled "the story of oil" (Crude) and written about pharmaceutical companies testing drugs on indigent patients (The Body Hunters). In The Fever, she displays the same curiosity, eye for history, and anger on behalf of the oppressed. (Drug companies take it squarely on the chin here as well, particularly in the chapter titled "Pharmacological Failure.")

Shah's biggest strength is her unforced, almost conversational writing style. Microbiology and epidemiology can get very complicated very quickly, but Shah proves to be an excellent translator, for the most part explaining even the most complicated scientific processes in an accessible (though never patronizing) way. At times, she gets ahead of herself — early sections on the evolution of Plasmodium required, at least for me, a rereading or two. Mostly, though, she's able to weave sections about science, history, and culture together in a seamless and fascinating way. Shah's intellectual enthusiasm and dry sense of humor recall popular science writers such as Steven Pinker and Stephen Jay Gould; her narrative strength and penchant for investigative journalism bring to mind science reporter and Flu author Gina Kolata.
"While we debate, and argue, and haphazardly collect our strength to fight malaria, the parasite refines its plague upon us," writes Shah. The Fever is a call to arms, though it's written with admirable clearheadedness and not a trace of alarmism. It's a compelling account of a disease that remains out of sight — and thus out of mind — for most Americans, even as it slowly tightens its grip on other parts of the world. Despite Shah's engaging prose and obvious enthusiasm, the subject matter means it's far from an easy read — but it might well be an essential one.

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Author:  Nicholas Carr

I sit down at the computer to work, but after two minutes my e-mail in-box pings. Two new messages! I read them, write quick replies, and get back to work. But then I check ESPN.com to see how the Cardinals did yesterday, and then I decide to open a Pandora station. I return to my work, but three minutes later I check on the stock market and then skim headlines on Google News. I work for another minute, and then...
I’m not complaining – not entirely. I like getting information and getting it fast. But I think I’m losing something, too – concentration, focus, and patience. Do you know what I mean?
In The Shallows, technology writer Nicholas Carr offers a measured but alarming answer. He concludes that the Internet is changing not only what we think about (gossip, up-to-the-minute news) but how we think. “Media ... supply the stuff of thought,” he writes, and “also shape the process of thought.”
Scientists have studied this change by examining neural pathways in the brain. They have concluded, says Carr, that “virtually all of our neural circuits – whether they’re involved in feeling, seeing, hearing, moving, thinking, learning, perceiving, or remembering – are subject to change.” The Internet, along with cellphones and television, is changing our brains, these scientists conclude.
Carr examines various historical advances in communication – from standardized writing to the printing press – to show how they, too, changed us. For example, literate people can better understand language, process visual signals, reason, and memorize than can illiterates. Furthermore, different languages produce different kinds of thinkers. For example, studies show English readers develop the part of the brain associated with deciphering visual shapes more than do Italians, probably because English words often look different from the way they sound, whereas Italian words are spelled just the way they are spoken.
Consider how different correspondence by letter is from text messaging or e-mailing. One arrives slowly; the other is immediate. One is developed in large, sometimes complex, paragraphs; the other is often composed of single sentences. As a result, says Carr, “our indulgence in the pleasures of informality and immediacy has led to a narrowing of expressiveness and a loss of eloquence.”
Also consider the difference between the book and the Web page. It requires concentration and commitment from the reader to tackle Orwell or Shakespeare. But the Internet is just the opposite, Carr notes. “When we go online, we enter an environment that promotes cursory reading, hurried and distracted thinking, and cursory learning.”
Hyperlinks, for instance, provide a choice: Should I keep reading or follow the link elsewhere? This choice reroutes our thoughts, forcing us to pause for a moment to evaluate the options. Every time we encounter a hyperlink (or, for that matter, other links, advertisements, or pop-ups), our thought makes an extra turn. Not surprising, then, are the results of an experiment showing that people who read text littered with hyperlinks comprehended and remembered far less than people who read the same text without links.
German researchers concluded that the average Internet user spends 10 seconds or less on a Web page. Researcher Jakob Neilson used more than 200 tiny cameras to trace human eye movement across Web pages, and found that people generally move in an “F” shape, reading across the top and then skipping down a bit to skim a bit more. When asked, “How do users read on the Web?” Neilson replied, “They don’t.”
Patricia Greenfield wrote in Science magazine that the Internet has led to the “widespread and sophisticated development of visual-spatial skills,” such as rotating objects in our minds and judging distances. But with “our new spatial intelligence” comes a reduction in “deep processing” that supports “mindful knowledge acquisition, inductive analysis, critical thinking, imagination, and reflection.”
Carr brilliantly brings together numerous studies and experiments to support this astounding argument: “With the exception of alphabets and number systems, the Net may well be the single most powerful mind-altering technology that has ever come into general use.”
Socrates once warned that writing would “implant forgetfulness,” providing “a recipe not for memory, but for reminder.” Maybe Socrates wasn’t wrong, just ahead of his time. What would he say about the Internet?

Glorified Dinosaurs: The Origin and Early Evolution of Birds

Author: Luis Chiappe

The last few years have witnessed an unparalleled rate of discoveries of early birds and their dinosaurian predecessors. Written by a recognised authority in the field, Glorified Dinosaurs: The Origin and Early Evolution of Birds provides a comprehensive summary of these discoveries and addresses the fascinating topic of how modern birds evolved from fearsome dinosaurs akin to the celebrated Velociraptor. The book focuses on an evolutionary approach and presents current research and fossil discoveries. The title includes coloured photographs of fossils and fossil localities, many of which have been rarely reproduced elsewhere.

Beasts of Eden: Walking Whales, Dawn Horses, and Other Enigmas of Mammal Evolution

Author: David Wallace
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this excellent work proves that a mural is worth 300 pages. Wallace (The Bonehunter's Revenge, etc.) uses the often overlooked Age of Mammals mural at Yale's Peabody Museum as the theme around which he builds the story of the evolution of scientific thought on mammalian evolution. Rather than structure his narrative around the theories themselves, Wallace focuses on the savants and scientists who developed them. Vivid descriptions of the "bare-knuckled rivalries of Gilded Age paleontology"-which saw respected scientists sending saboteurs to each other's digs and lambasting one another in the popular press, and museum founders who grafted human teeth onto the heads of roosters-bring these men to life as well as the best of them were able to do for the specimens they found. Each character's particular expeditions, macabre youthful pastimes and the fossils that led to their fame or downfall are illuminated by abundant quotations from a wide variety of sources. Judicious use of personal anecdotes lends an air of conviviality to the author's prose, and frequent returns to the Peabody mural add still more depth and perspective. Paleontology buffs will not be the only ones entranced; this charming story, skillfully told, will appeal to history and biography fans as well. 18 b&w photos, 2 line illus.

Book List on Humanizing of Animals

1. The Emotional Lives of Animals by Marc Bekoff
2. Why Animal Suffering Matters by Andrew Linzey
3. Animals as Persons: Essays on the Abolition of Animal Exploitation by Gary Francione
4. Fear of the Animal Planet: The Hidden History of Animal Resistance by Jason Hribal 

Book List on Society and Consumerism

1. Prosperity without Growth: Economics for a Finite Planet by Tim Jackson
2. Free: Adventures on the Margins of a Wasteful Society by Katherine Hibbert
3. The Value of Nothing: How to Reshape Market Society and Redefine Democracy by Raj Patel
4. Priceless: The Myth of Fair Value (and How to Take Advantage of It) by William Poundstone 
5. Small Change: Why Business Won't Change the World by Michael Edwards

CHEATING MONKEYS AND CITIZEN BEES : The NATURE of COOPERATION in ANIMALS and HUMANS

Author: Lee Dugatkin

Evolutionary biologist Dugatkin (Cooperation Among Animals) is unabashed in his belief that "the study of evolution and animal behavior can be used to foster and enhance cooperation in humans." Without resorting to simple minded biological determinism, he argues forcefully that the behavioral predisposition of humans may be predicted by evolution. Thus, he asserts that research in animal behavior can provide baseline information about parallel behavior in (admittedly more complex) humanity. Such investigations may ultimately help us better understand the underpinnings of human behavior and allow us to restructure our environments to promote more cooperation. Dugatkin explains that cooperation arises through four pathways, "family dynamics, reciprocal transactions, selfish teamwork, and group altruism." He devotes one chapter to each pathway, clearly explaining the underlying evolutionary theory and providing myriad animal examples. His fascinating instances range widely from vampire bats willing to regurgitate blood for starving neighbors to mongooses who take turns baby-sitting. Each chapter concludes with an attempt to tie the lessons learned from animals to suggestions for public policy issues as diverse as class size in elementary schools and partnering in police departments. These applications, however, are the weakest part of an otherwise startling and eye-opening glimpse into the evolution of behavior.

Seasons of Life: The Biological Rhythms That Enable Living Things to Thrive and Survive

Author: Russell G. Foster and Leon Kreitzman

At the onset of winter, the American wood frog burrows into the soil of its native northern Canada. As the temperature drops, the frog's body begins to freeze, and in response it produces a supply of glucose that effectively lowers the freezing point of water, preventing the formation of ice crystals. For months the frog stops breathing and its heart stops beating. When spring arrives and the land begins to thaw, so does the wood frog.
Animals and plants are able to adapt to the planet's changing seasons by virtue of their internal calendar, write Russell G. Foster and Leon Kreitzman in Seasons of Life: The Biological Rhythms That Enable Living Things to Thrive and Survive (Yale University Press). In their previous book together, Rhythms of Life (Yale University Press), the authors dealt with the circadian clock that allows organisms to track the time of day, even in controlled laboratory settings. The circannual calendar, they note, requires much more patience of the scientists who study it; but although their knowledge of seasonal biological variations remains incomplete, "we have uncovered some of the mechanisms involved."
Those mechanisms include hibernation, migration, and seasonal reproduction, which ensures that animals give birth at the optimum time of year for survival —largely determined by the relative abundance of food. Many nonequatorial animals accomplish this by breeding only at certain times. During the rest of the year, their reproductive organs "regress," or all but disappear, saving much-needed energy as well as preventing conception.
Foster and Kreitzman —respectively a professor of circadian neuroscience at the University of Oxford and a science writer and broadcaster —stress the interconnectivity between species' seasonal adaptations: "The organisms higher up the food chain have to time their activities to the rise and fall in the abundance of those lower down the food chain." Thus interference with one species' population can set off a complex series of reactions throughout an entire ecosystem.
The second half of Seasons of Life focuses on Homo sapiens and the myriad ways our lives —and deaths —are affected by the time of year. The authors examine the seasonal cycles of infectious diseases, as well as seasonal affective disorder and how it has been diagnosed and treated throughout human history. They even suggest that the month in which a person is born has significant statistical correlations. Although predicting people's future based on the month of their birth has long been the province of astrologers, studies now show that, depending on geographical location, date of birth may be linked to incidence of certain diseases, physical characteristics, and even personality traits. Summer babies are more likely to develop the digestive disorder celiac disease, winter babies "show increased novelty and sensation seeking," and, "in the Northern Hemisphere, babies born in the early part of the year are 6 to 8 percent more likely than others to develop schizophrenia later in life."
Noting that "humans, just as chimpanzees and gorillas, are ready to procreate more or less at the drop of a hat, more or less most of the time," the authors look to factors like women's nutritional status at the time of conception to account for variations in offspring. Our past plays a role, too: June is still the most popular month in which to marry, in part because, for our agrarian forebears, "a June or July conception and a subsequent early spring birth meant that the mother had recovered to some extent in time for the busy autumn harvest season the following year."
Climate change has already begun to affect the duration and dispositions of the seasons, threatening all species, warn the authors: "Those that succeed will be those that have the flexibility to change and adapt to the new temporal regime."

The Routes of Man: How Roads Are Changing the World and the Way We Live Today

Author: Ted Conover

The author  reveals globalization's neural system growing along the world's expanding and connecting road systems. Governments and smugglers, armies and insurgents, and the local poor and international NGOs negotiate their ambitions at border crossings, checkpoints, and dives. Tracing the route of rare mahogany from Peru's illegal jungle logging camps to Manhattan's brownstones, he examines how highways connect the fates of forests, untouched tribes, and finicky antique collectors. In the Himalayan frontier of Kashmir, highways are ventures of national territorial control, and in China a growing superhighway system underscores the disparity between the haves and have-nots. Conover's voice is that of a sobered Kerouac, tamed by a bigger conscience, and on an open road increasingly controlled by corporate, government, and military interests. His acclaimed narrative gifts are on full display in a wonderfully evenhanded treatment of the roadway in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Highways have been co-opted for Israeli settlements, and Palestinian professors, engineers, and migrant laborers construct ever-shifting back-road routes and taxi-hops to earn their living. With Conover as our guide, we move through Israeli checkpoints in Palestine's West Bank and witness the daily indignities faced by corralled Palestinian commuters and the psychological angst of Israeli soldiers. There is no open road here, just a gritty, fractured infrastructure of hatred that strangles both nations.More subtly, Conover reveals the highway as common social territory, particularly as the meeting place between men and women. His treatment of east African truck drivers—whose travels are suspected to be linked with the global spread of AIDS—avoids stereotype and sensationalism. He is as attentive to and interested by the drudgery of transporting goods as with the truckers' polygamy or encounters with sex workers and police bribery. We meet truck drivers who are true gentlemen and tough, articulate women fully capable of negotiating roadside life. Conover maintains a commitment to accurate portrayal and embraces the whole world, not only its dramatic aspects. The Routes of Man seeks to describe more than to explain this ever-connecting world. It does the former with an agility that leaves the reader anticipating the next adventure. But the narrative fails to build the argument posed in its subtitle: that roads themselves have become a source of change in the world, independent of the nations, armies, and cities that build, control, and fill them with trade and traffic. But this many-textured journey is not to be missed. Conover deftly navigates the romance and harsh reality of a world intent on a real and not just a virtual connectedness