Further Reading

‘If all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail.’ Maslow's hammer reminds us that a diverse range of tools and approaches is essential for understanding and solving the complex problems of the world. Our collective brain has a vast repository of knowledge and expertise, but its strewn across the academic literature and popular sources. Within some of these books and papers are loose threads, partial answers, and pieces of the puzzle of who we are, how we got here, and where we're going. But once these are weaved into a tapestry, that tapestry is almost obvious, its implications unmissable. Once seen, it cannot be unseen.

I have tried to show you the tapestry in this book, highlighting the threads that I think are most important, and yet by necessity each thread is missing fascinating details and important context that can often only be hinted at by a single paragraph or even single sentence. This is no doubt dissatisfying for readers with an undisciplined curiosity, courage to trample over traditional disciplines, and a willingness to deliberately and disrespectfully dismantle unquestioned assumptions that have been passed down to us by our culture. For those who want to delve deeper and explore all those fascinating details and important context, here are some recommended further readings.

Introduction

For those looking to further their knowledge in the fields of psychology, economics, evolutionary biology, anthropology, and data science, there is no shortage of excellent introductory material available.

For an introduction to psychology, I assign Peter Gray and David F. Bjorklund's popular textbook Psychology, 8th edition, Worth Publishers, 2018, alongside a popular book on cultural evolution, Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, Princeton University Press, 2015.

For an introduction to economics see Thomas Sowell, Basic Economics, Basic Books, 2014; and The Core Team, The Economy: Economics for a Changing World, e-book, Core Economics Education, 2022, www.core-econ.org (available free). A deeper dive is Gregory Mankiw's excellent textbook Principles of Economics, Cengage Learning, 2020 (among others). For how economists think about mathematical models (with a balanced discussion on Milton Friedman's 1953 essay) see Dani Rodrik, Economics Rules: Why Economics Works, When It Fails, and How to Tell the Difference, Oxford University Press, 2015.

To contrast this with how evolutionary biologists and cultural evolution researchers think about models, see Hanna Kokko, Modelling for Field Biologists and Other Interesting People, Cambridge University Press, 2007. A further reading is Sarah P. Otto and Troy Day, A Biologist's Guide to Mathematical Modeling in Ecology and Evolution, Princeton University Press, 2011.

For a history of anthropology see Charles King, Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century, Anchor, 2020.

For a slightly less mathematical but still rigorous approach to control systems, which also focuses on the context of humans, see Richard J. Jagacinski and John M. Flach, Control Theory for Humans: Quantitative Approaches to Modeling Performance, CRC Press, 2018.

There are few books that bridge these disciplines. For psychology meets economics see George A. Akerlof and Robert J. Shiller, Animal Spirits: How Human Psychology Drives the Economy, and Why It Matters for Global Capitalism, Princeton University Press, 2010; and R. H. Thaler, Misbehaving: The Making of Behavioural Economics, Allen Lane, 2016. For evolution meets economics there is Robert H. Frank, The Darwin Economy, Princeton University Press, 2012 and Lionel Page's Optimally Irrational, Cambridge University Press, 2022.

Data science is a rapidly changing space, but for a fundamental understanding of probability and statistics, you can't do much better than Richard McElreath's freely available online course and accompanying textbook, Statistical Rethinking: A Bayesian Course with Examples in R and Stan, Chapman & Hall/CRC, 2020.

There are many great books on the history of science and discoveries in astronomy. One older thought-provoking volume with a focus on astronomy that shaped me in my youth is Arthur Koestler's The Sleepwalkers: A History of Man's Changing Vision of the Universe, Penguin, 1959.

For the history and philosophy of science and the flow of ideas, in addition to classics such as Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962) and Karl Popper's The Logic of Scientific Discovery (1959), you might also enjoy the more recent Randall Collins, The Sociology of Philosophies, Harvard University Press, 2009; and David Wootton, The Invention of Science: A New History of the Scientific Revolution, Penguin, 2015.

For the role of theory in science, Bernard Forscher wrote a wonderful article expanding on Poincaré's quote about bricks versus houses: ‘Chaos in the Brickyard’, Science 142, no. 3590 (1963): 339; this article is beautifully illustrated in comic form by Matteo Farinella at https://massivesci.com/articles/chaos-in-the-brickyard-comic-matteo-farinella/

The full text of David Foster Wallace's commencement address was later published as a book, David Foster Wallace, This Is Water: Some Thoughts, Delivered on a Significant Occasion, about Living a Compassionate Life, Little, Brown, 2009.

Specific and specialist reading

  1. Muthukrishna, Michael, and Joseph Henrich, ‘A Problem in Theory’, Nature Human Behaviour 3, no. 3 (2019): 221–9

Chapter 1: Laws of Life

Here are a few good introductions to the major themes in this chapter. Some of the enjoyable TOTTEE books I mention or hint at include: Jared M. Diamond, Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years, Random House, 1998; Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens: A Brief History of Humankind, Random House, 2014; Ian Morris, Why the West Rules – for Now: The Patterns of History and What They Reveal about the Future, Profile, 2010; and James A. Robinson and Daron Acemoglu, Why Nations Fail: The Origins of Power, Prosperity and Poverty, Profile, 2012.

For major transitions and key inventions in evolution there are two books by John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry, The Origins of Life: From the Birth of Life to the Origin of Language and The Major Transitions in Evolution, both published by Oxford University Press, respectively 2000 and 1997; and Nick Lane's Life Ascending: The Ten Great Inventions of Evolution, Profile, 2010.

Multilevel selection – cooperation and competition from cells to societies – is covered by Itai Yanai and Martin Lercher, The Society of Genes, Harvard University Press, 2016; Athena Aktipis, The Cheating Cell, Princeton University Press, 2020; and D. S. Wilson, This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution, Knopf Doubleday, 2019. For a deeper dive there is Samir Okasha, Evolution and the Levels of Selection, Clarendon Press, 2006; and Eva Jablonka and Marion J. Lamb, Evolution in Four Dimensions: Genetic, Epigenetic, Behavioral, and Symbolic Variation in the History of Life, MIT Press, 2014.

For more on ancient human migrations see David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past, Oxford University Press, 2018.

The analogy of ‘ideas having sex’ was coined by Matt Ridley. Two relevant books of his are The Rational Optimist: How Prosperity Evolves and How Innovation Works, both published by Harper, in 2010 and 2020 respectively.

As a starting point for the role of energy in life, civilization, and economics, Ian Morris has a book with related ideas: Foragers, Farmers, and Fossil Fuels, Princeton University Press, 2015.

On the role of fire and farming in human evolution see Richard W. Wrangham, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, Profile, 2010; and James C. Scott, Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States, Yale University Press, 2017. For more thorough and detailed discussion, I recommend two recent books by Vaclav Smil (for an additional endorsement, Smil is Bill Gates’ favorite author): Growth: From Microorganisms to Megacities and Energy and Civilization: A History, both by MIT Press, published 2019 and 2018 respectively.

For the role of energy returns in the fall of civilizations see Joseph Tainter, The Collapse of Complex Societies, Cambridge University Press, 1988; and Thomas Homer-Dixon, The Upside of Down: Catastrophe, Creativity, and the Renewal of Civilization, Island Press, 2010.

On economic growth and productivity declines there is Tyler Cowen, The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better, Penguin, 2011.

Specific and specialist reading

  1. Andersson, G. E., Olof Karlberg, Björn Canbäck et al., ‘On the Origin of Mitochondria: A Genomics Perspective’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B: Biological Sciences 358, no. 1429 (2003): 165–79
  2. Asphaug, Erik, ‘Impact Origin of the Moon?’, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 42 (2014): 551–78
  3. De Visser, J., G. M. Arjan, and Santiago F. Elena, ‘The Evolution of Sex: Empirical Insights into the Roles of Epistasis and Drift’, Nature Reviews Genetics 8, no. 2 (2007): 139–49
  4. Dyson, Freeman J., ‘Search for Artificial Stellar Sources of Infrared Radiation’, Science 131, no. 3414 (1960): 1667–8
  5. Fix, Blair, ‘Energy and Institution Size’, PLoS ONE 12, no. 2 (2017): e0171823
  6. Flannery, K., and J. Marcus, The Creation of Inequality, Harvard University Press, 2012
  7. Gabaldón, Toni, ‘Origin and Early Evolution of the Eukaryotic Cell’, Annual Review of Microbiology 75 (2021): 631–47
  8. Grosberg, R. K., and R. R. Strathmann, ‘The Evolution of Multicellularity: A Minor Major Transition?’, Annual Review of Ecology Evolution and Systematics 38, no. 1 (2007): 621–54
  9. Hall, Charles A. S., Energy Return on Investment: A Unifying Principle for Biology, Economics, and Sustainability, Springer, 2017
  10. Hall, Charles A. S., Cutler J. Cleveland, and Robert Kaufmann, ‘Energy and Resource Quality: The Ecology of the Economic Process’, Wiley-Blackwell, 1986
  11. Hall, Charles A. S., and Kent Klitgaard, Energy and the Wealth of Nations: An Introduction to Biophysical Economics, Springer International, 2018
  12. Hey, Jody, ‘On the Number of New World Founders: A Population Genetic Portrait of the Peopling of the Americas’, PLoS Biology 3, no. 6 (2005): e193
  13. Higham, Tom, Katerina Douka, Rachel Wood et al., ‘The Timing and Spatiotemporal Patterning of Neanderthal Disappearance’, Nature 512, no. 7514 (2014): 306–9
  14. Hohmann-Marriott, Martin F., and Robert E. Blankenship, ‘Evolution of Photosynthesis’, Annual Review of Plant Biology 62 (2011): 515–48
  15. Jedwab, Remi, Noel D. Johnson, and Mark Koyama, ‘The Economic Impact of the Black Death’, Journal of Economic Literature 60, no. 1 (2022): 132–78
  16. Knoll, Andrew H., ‘The Multiple Origins of Complex Multicellularity’, Annual Review of Earth and Planetary Sciences 39 (2011): 217–39
  17. Koppelaar, Rembrandt H. E. M., ‘Solar-PV Energy Payback and Net Energy: Meta-assessment of Study Quality, Reproducibility, and Results Harmonization’, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 72 (2017): 1241–55
  18. Koyama, Mark, and Jared Rubin, How the World Became Rich: The Historical Origins of Economic Growth, John Wiley, 2022
  19. Langergraber, Kevin E., Kay Prüfer, Carolyn Rowney et al., ‘Generation Times in Wild Chimpanzees and Gorillas Suggest Earlier Divergence Times in Great Ape and Human Evolution’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 39 (2012): 15716–21
  20. Lyons, Timothy W., Christopher T. Reinhard, and Noah J. Planavsky, ‘The Rise of Oxygen in Earth's Early Ocean and Atmosphere’, Nature 506, no. 7488 (2014): 307–15
  21. McDonald, Michael J., Daniel P. Rice, and Michael M. Desai, ‘Sex Speeds Adaptation by Altering the Dynamics of Molecular Evolution’, Nature 531, no. 7593 (2016): 233–6
  22. Mankiw, N. Gregory, David Romer, and David N. Weil. ‘A Contribution to the Empirics of Economic Growth’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 107, no. 2 (1992): 407–37
  23. Marciniak, Stephanie, Christina M. Bergey, Ana Maria Silva et al., ‘An Integrative Skeletal and Paleogenomic Analysis of Stature Variation Suggests Relatively Reduced Health for Early European Farmers’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119, no. 15 (2022): e2106743119
  24. Mignacca, Benito, and Giorgio Locatelli, ‘Economics and Finance of Small Modular Reactors: A Systematic Review and Research Agenda’, Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews 118 (2019): 109519
  25. Mokyr, Joel, The British Industrial Revolution: An Economic Perspective, Routledge, 2018
  26. Muthukrishna, Michael, Michael Doebeli, Maciej Chudek et al., ‘The Cultural Brain Hypothesis: How Culture Drives Brain Expansion, Sociality, and Life History’, PLoS Computational Biology 14, no. 11 (2018): e1006504
  27. Navarrete, Ana, Carel P. van Schaik, and Karin Isler, ‘Energetics and the Evolution of Human Brain Size’, Nature 480, no. 7375 (2011): 91–3
  28. Nielsen, Claus, Thibaut Brunet, and Detlev Arendt, ‘Evolution of the Bilaterian Mouth and Anus’, Nature Ecology & Evolution 2, no. 9 (2018): 1358–7
  29. Orgel, Leslie E., ‘The Origin of Life – A Review of Facts and Speculations’, Trends in Biochemical Sciences 23, no. 12 (1998): 491–5
  30. Pingali, Prabhu L., ‘Green Revolution: Impacts, Limits, and the Path Ahead’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 31 (2012): 12302–8
  31. Planck Collaboration, P. A. R. Ade, N. Aghanim et al., ‘Planck 2015 Results: XIII: Cosmological Parameters’, Astronomy & Astrophysics 594 (October 2016): A13
  32. Romer, Paul M., ‘The Origins of Endogenous Growth’, Journal of Economic Perspectives 8, no. 1 (1994): 3–22
  33. Shine, Rick, Cane Toad Wars, University of California Press, 2018
  34. Tewksbury, J. J., and G. P. Nabhan, ‘Directed Deterrence by Capsaicin in Chillies’, Nature 412, no. 6845 (2001): 403–4
  35. Weißbach, Daniel, G. Ruprecht, A. Huke et al., ‘Energy Intensities, EROIs (Energy Returned on Invested), and Energy Payback Times of Electricity Generating Power Plants’, Energy 52 (2013): 210–21
  36. Wrigley, E. A., Energy and the English Industrial Revolution, Cambridge University Press, 2010
  37. Zeder, Melinda A., ‘The Origins of Agriculture in the Near East’, Current Anthropology 52, no. S4 (2011): S221–35

Chapter 2: The Human Animal

An encompassing world history is Peter Frankopan, The Silk Roads: A New History of the World, Bloomsbury, 2015. For more on Franz Boas in the context of the history of anthropology see Charles King, Gods of the Upper Air: How a Circle of Renegade Anthropologists Reinvented Race, Sex, and Gender in the Twentieth Century, Anchor, 2020.

There are a few recent books on cultural evolution, dual inheritance theory, culture–gene co-evolution, and the new science of human evolution: Joseph Henrich, The Secret of Our Success, Princeton University Press, 2015, and The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous, Penguin, 2020; Kevin N. Laland, Darwin's Unfinished Symphony, Princeton University Press, 2018; Robert Boyd, A Different Kind of Animal, Princeton University Press, 2017; and Lesley Newson and Peter Richerson, A Story of Us: A New Look at Human Evolution, Oxford University Press, 2021.

A complementary view from evolutionary psychology is provided by Steven Pinker, The Blank Slate: The Modern Denial of Human Nature, Viking, 2004; and David M. Buss, Evolutionary Psychology: The New Science of the Mind, Routledge, 2019.

Some of the language examples and the later Shakespeare example come from Mark Forsyth: see his The Etymologicon: A Circular Stroll through the Hidden Connections of the English Language, Penguin, 2012, and The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase, Icon Books, 2013.

For the illusion of explanatory depth, how everything is obvious once you know the answer, and one of my favorite essays on the ‘reductive seduction of other people's problems’, see Steven Sloman and Philip Fernbach, The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone, Penguin, 2018; Duncan J. Watts, Everything Is Obvious: Why Common Sense Is Nonsense, Atlantic Books, 2011; and Courtney Martin, ‘The Reductive Seduction of Other People's Problems’, Bright Magazine online, 11 January 2016.

Specific and specialist reading

  1. Al-Andalusi, Said, Semaan I. Salem, and Alok Kumar, Science in the Medieval World, vol. 5, University of Texas Press, 1996
  2. Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, Skin Cancer in Australia, AIHW, 2016
  3. Barsh, Gregory S., ‘What Controls Variation in Human Skin Color?’, PLoS Biology 1, no. 1 (2003): e27
  4. Beckwith, Christopher I., Empires of the Silk Road, Princeton University Press, 2009
  5. Boyd, Robert, and Peter J. Richerson, Culture and the Evolutionary Process, University of Chicago Press, 1985
  6. Burns, Thomas S., Rome and the Barbarians, 100 BC–AD 400, Johns Hopkins University Press, 2003
  7. Cashman, Kevin D., Kirsten G. Dowling, Zuzana Škrabáková et al., ‘Vitamin D Deficiency in Europe: Pandemic?’, American Journal of Clinical Nutrition 103, no. 4 (2016): 1033–44
  8. Cavalli-Sforza, Luigi Luca, and Marcus W. Feldman, Cultural Transmission and Evolution: A Quantitative Approach, Princeton University Press, 1981
  9. Chua, Amy, Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, Bloomsbury, 2011
  10. Chudek, Maciej, Michael Muthukrishna, and Joe Henrich, ‘Cultural Evolution’, in The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, pp. 1–21, Wiley, 2015
  11. Cosmides, Leda, ‘The Logic of Social Exchange: Has Natural Selection Shaped How Humans Reason? Studies with the Wason Selection Task’, Cognition 31, no. 3 (1989): 187–276
  12. Dunbar, Robin Ian MacDonald, Grooming, Gossip, and the Evolution of Language, Harvard University Press, 1998
  13. Garland, Cedric F., Frank C. Garland, Edward D. Gorham et al., ‘The Role of Vitamin D in Cancer Prevention’, American Journal of Public Health 96, no. 2 (2006): 252–61
  14. Grogger, Jeffrey, Andreas Steinmayr, and Joachim Winter, ‘The Wage Penalty of Regional Accents’, working paper 26719, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2020
  15. Henrich, Joseph, ‘The Evolution of Costly Displays, Cooperation and Religion: Credibility Enhancing Displays and Their Implications for Cultural Evolution’, Evolution and Human Behavior 30, no. 4 (2009): 244–60
  16. Henrich, Joseph, and Francisco J. Gil-White, ‘The Evolution of Prestige: Freely Conferred Deference as a Mechanism for Enhancing the Benefits of Cultural Transmission’, Evolution and Human Behavior 22, no. 3 (2001): 165–96
  17. Henrich, Joseph, and Natalie Henrich, ‘The Evolution of Cultural Adaptations: Fijian Food Taboos Protect against Dangerous Marine Toxins’, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 277, no. 1701 (2010): 3715–24
  18. Herrmann, Esther, Josep Call, María Victoria Hernández-Lloreda et al., ‘Humans Have Evolved Specialized Skills of Social Cognition: The Cultural Intelligence Hypothesis’, Science 317, no. 5843 (2007): 1360–6
  19. Horner, Victoria, and Andrew Whiten, ‘Causal Knowledge and Imitation/Emulation Switching in Chimpanzees (Pan Troglodytes) and Children (Homo Sapiens)’, Animal Cognition 8 (2005): 164–81
  20. Jablonski, Nina G., and George Chaplin, ‘Human Skin Pigmentation as an Adaptation to UV radiation’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 107, supplement no. 2 (2010): 8962–8
  21. ——, ‘The Colours of Humanity: The Evolution of Pigmentation in the Human Lineage’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 372, no. 1724 (2017): 20160349
  22. Kahneman, Daniel, and Amos Tversky, ‘Prospect Theory: An Analysis of Decision under Risk’, Econometrica 47, no. 2 (1979): 263–92
  23. Keil, Frank C., ‘Folkscience: Coarse Interpretations of a Complex Reality’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 7, no. 8 (2003): 368–73
  24. ——, ‘Explanation and Understanding’, Annual Review of Psychology 57, no. 1 (2006): 227–54
  25. Kendal, Rachel L., Neeltje J. Boogert, Luke Rendell et al., ‘Social Learning Strategies: Bridge-building between Fields’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 22, no. 7 (2018): 651–65
  26. Kinzler, Katherine D., Kristin Shutts, Jasmine DeJesus et al., ‘Accent Trumps Race in Guiding Children's Social Preferences’, Social Cognition 27, no. 4 (2009): 623–34
  27. Kipling, Rudyard, ‘The White Man's Burden’, The Times, 4 February 1899
  28. Knight, Phil, Shoe Dog: A Memoir by the Creator of Nike, Simon & Schuster, 2016
  29. Kurzban, Robert, John Tooby, and Leda Cosmides, ‘Can Race Be Erased? Coalitional Computation and Social Categorization’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 98, no. 26 (2001): 15387–92
  30. Lanman, Jonathan A., and Michael D. Buhrmester, ‘Religious Actions Speak Louder than Words: Exposure to Credibility-enhancing Displays Predicts Theism’, Religion, Brain & Behavior 7, no. 1 (2017): 3–16
  31. Lewis, Bernard, The Muslim Discovery of Europe, W. W. Norton, 2001
  32. Luria, Alexander Romanovich, Cognitive Development: Its Cultural and Social Foundations, Harvard University Press, 1976
  33. Norenzayan, Ara, Azim F. Shariff, Will M. Gervais et al., ‘The Cultural Evolution of Prosocial Religions’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 39 (2016): e1
  34. Parasher-Sen, Aloka, ed., Subordinate and Marginal Groups in Early India, Oxford University Press, 2007
  35. Persky, Joseph, ‘Retrospectives: The Ethology of Homo Economicus’, Journal of Economic Perspectives 9, no. 2 (1995): 221–31
  36. Phelps, Michael, and Alan Abrahamson, No Limits: The Will to Succeed, Simon & Schuster, 2008
  37. Rozenblit, Leonid, and Frank Keil, ‘The Misunderstood Limits of Folk Science: An Illusion of Explanatory Depth’, Cognitive Science 26, no. 5 (2002): 521–62
  38. Saussy, Haun, The Making of Barbarians: Chinese Literature and Multilingual Asia, vol. 48, Princeton University Press, 2022
  39. Simon, Herbert A., ‘Models of Man: Social and Rational’, Wiley, 1957
  40. Spiro, A., and J. L. Buttriss, ‘Vitamin D: An Overview of Vitamin D Status and Intake in Europe’, Nutrition Bulletin 39, no. 4 (2014): 322–50
  41. Thaler, Richard H, and Cass R. Sunstein, Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health, Wealth, and Happiness, Yale University Press, 2008
  42. Tillman, B., ‘Are We to Spread the Christian Religion with the Bayonet Point as Mahomet Spread Islam with a Scimitar?’, Address to the U.S. Senate, 7 February 1899
  43. Todd, Peter M., and Gerd Ed Gigerenzer, Ecological Rationality: Intelligence in the World, Oxford University Press, 2012
  44. Uchiyama, Ryutaro, Rachel Spicer, and Michael Muthukrishna, ‘Cultural Evolution of Genetic Heritability’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 45 (2022): e152

Chapter 3: Human Intelligence

A good history of eugenics is Adam Rutherford, Control: The Dark History and Troubling Present of Eugenics, Orion, 2023. For a summary of the history and research on intelligence from those who argue for the importance of culture see Richard E. Nisbett, Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count, W. W. Norton, 2009; and for two from those who argue for the importance of genes see Robert Plomin, Blueprint, with a New Afterword: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are, MIT Press, 2019; and Kathryn Paige Harden, The Genetic Lottery: Why DNA Matters for Social Equality, Princeton University Press, 2021.

How language and learning change our brains is described by Guy Deutscher, Through the Language Glass: Why the World Looks Different in Other Languages, Metropolitan Books, 2010; and by Stanislas Dehaene in three books: How We Learn: The New Science of Education and the Brain, Penguin, 2020; Reading in the Brain: The New Science of How We Read, Penguin, 2010; and The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics, Oxford University Press, 2011.

A longer case for how popular culture has become more complex and made us cleverer is presented by Steven Johnson in Everything Bad Is Good for You: How Today's Popular Culture Is Actually Making Us Smarter, Penguin, 2006.

For how to think about race from a genetic perspective, dispelling many myths, see Adam Rutherford, How to Argue with a Racist: History, Science, Race and Reality, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2020; David Reich, Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the New Science of the Human Past, Pantheon Books, 2018; and Steven J. Heine, DNA Is Not Destiny: The Remarkable, Completely Misunderstood Relationship between You and Your Genes, W. W. Norton, 2017.

Specific and specialist reading

  1. Antman, Francisca, and Brian Duncan, ‘Incentives to Identify: Racial Identity in the Age of Affirmative Action’, Review of Economics and Statistics 97, no. 3 (2015): 710–13
  2. Archer, John, ‘The Reality and Evolutionary Significance of Human Psychological Sex Differences’, Biological Reviews 94, no. 4 (2019): 1381–415
  3. Auton, Adam, Adi Fledel-Alon, Susanne Pfeifer et al., ‘A Fine-scale Chimpanzee Genetic Map from Population Sequencing’, Science 336, no. 6078 (2012): 193–8
  4. Beck, Sarah R., Ian A. Apperly, Jackie Chappell et al., ‘Making Tools Isn't Child's Play’, Cognition 119, no. 2 (2011): 301–6
  5. Bender, Andrea, and Sieghard Beller, ‘Fingers as a Tool for Counting – Naturally Fixed or Culturally Flexible?’, Frontiers in Psychology 2 (2011): 256
  6. Binet, Alfred, and Theodore Simon, ‘New Methods for the Diagnosis of the Intellectual Level of Subnormals, L’Année Psych., 1905, pp. 191–244
  7. Botvinick, Matthew M., Jonathan D. Cohen, and Cameron S. Carter, ‘Conflict Monitoring and Anterior Cingulate Cortex: An Update’, Trends in Cognitive Sciences 8, no. 12 (2004): 539–46
  8. Bowden, Rory, Tammie S. MacFie, Simon Myers et al., ‘Genomic Tools for Evolution and Conservation in the Chimpanzee: Pan Troglodytes Ellioti Is a Genetically Distinct Population’, PLoS Genetics 8, no. 3 (2012): e1002504
  9. Brinch, Christian N., and Taryn Ann Galloway, ‘Schooling in Adolescence Raises IQ Scores’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 2 (2012): 425–30
  10. Burgoyne, Alexander P., David Z. Hambrick, and Brooke N. Macnamara, ‘How Firm Are the Foundations of Mind-Set Theory? The Claims Appear Stronger Than the Evidence’, Psychological Science 31, no. 3 (2020): 258–67
  11. Campbell, Michael C., and Sarah A. Tishkoff, ‘African Genetic Diversity: Implications for Human Demographic History, Modern Human Origins, and Complex Disease Mapping’, Annual Review of Genomics and Human Genetics 9 (2008): 403–33
  12. Card, David, Stefano DellaVigna, Patricia Funk et al., ‘Gender Gaps at the Academies’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 120, no. 4 (24 January 2023): e2212421120
  13. Ceci, Stephen J., and Wendy M. Williams, ‘Understanding Current Causes of Women's Underrepresentation in Science’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 108, no. 8 (2011): 3157–62
  14. Dev, Pritha, Blessing U. Mberu, and Roland Pongou, ‘Ethnic Inequality: Theory and Evidence from Formal Education in Nigeria’, Economic Development and Cultural Change 64, no. 4 (2016): 603–60
  15. Dickens, William T., and James R. Flynn, ‘Black Americans Reduce the Racial IQ Gap: Evidence from Standardization Samples’, Psychological Science 17, no. 10 (2006): 913–20
  16. Durvasula, Arun, and Sriram Sankararaman, ‘Recovering Signals of Ghost Archaic Introgression in African Populations’, Science Advances 6, no. 7 (2020): eaax5097
  17. Fan, Shaohua, Matthew E. B. Hansen, Yancy Lo et al., ‘Going Global by Adapting Local: A Review of Recent Human Adaptation’, Science 354, no. 6308 (2016): 54–9
  18. Flynn, James R., What Is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect, Cambridge University Press, 2007
  19. Galton, Francis, ‘Hereditary Talent and Character’, Macmillan's Magazine 12, nos 157–166 (1865): 318–27
  20. ——, Hereditary Genius, Macmillan & Co., 1869
  21. Giangrande, Evan J., Christopher R. Beam, Sarah Carroll et al., ‘Multivariate Analysis of the Scarr–Rowe Interaction across Middle Childhood and Early Adolescence’, Intelligence 77, no. 1 (2019): 101400
  22. Halpern, Diane F., and Mary L. LaMay, ‘The Smarter Sex: A Critical Review of Sex Differences in Intelligence’, Educational Psychology Review 12, no. 2 (2000): 229–46
  23. Hanscombe, Ken B., Maciej Trzaskowski, Claire M. A. Haworth et al., ‘Socioeconomic Status (SES) and Children's Intelligence (IQ): In a UK-Representative Sample SES Moderates the Environmental, Not Genetic, Effect on IQ’, PloS ONE 7, no. 2 (2012): e30320
  24. Herrnstein, Richard J., and Charles Murray, The Bell Curve: Intelligence and Class Structure in American Life, Free Press, 1994
  25. Hsin, Amy, and Yu Xie, ‘Explaining Asian Americans’ Academic Advantage over Whites’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 111, no. 23 (2014): 8416–21
  26. Hulance, Jo, Mark Kowalski, and Robert Fairhurst, Long-term Strategies to Reduce Lead Exposure from Drinking Water, report number DWI14372.2, Drinking Water Inspectorate (UK), 26 January 2021
  27. Hyde, Janet S., and Janet E. Mertz, ‘Gender, Culture, and Mathematics Performance’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, no. 22 (2 June 2009): 8801–7
  28. Khalid, Muhammed Abdul, and Li Yang, ‘Income Inequality and Ethnic Cleavages in Malaysia: Evidence from Distributional National Accounts (1984–2014)’, Journal of Asian Economics 72 (2021): 101252
  29. Kiesow, Hannah, Robin I. M. Dunbar, Joseph W. Kable et al., ‘10,000 Social Brains: Sex Differentiation in Human Brain Anatomy’, Science Advances 6, no. 12 (March 2020): eaaz1170
  30. König, Peter, and Sabine U. König, ‘Learning a New Sense by Sensory Augmentation’, in 2016 4th International Winter Conference on Brain-Computer Interface (BCI), pp. 1–3, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers, 2016
  31. Laland, Kevin N., John Odling-Smee, and Sean Myles, ‘How Culture Shaped the Human Genome: Bringing Genetics and the Human Sciences Together’, Nature Reviews Genetics 11, no. 2 (2010): 137–44
  32. Lassek, William D., and Steven J. C. Gaulin, ‘Costs and Benefits of Fat-free Muscle Mass in Men: Relationship to Mating Success, Dietary Requirements, and Native Immunity’, Evolution and Human Behavior 30, no. 5 (2009): 322–8.
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  36. Machin, Stephen, and Tuomas Pekkarinen, ‘Global Sex Differences in Test Score Variability’, Science 322, no. 5906 (2008): 1331–2
  37. Muthukrishna, Michael, and Joseph Henrich, ‘Innovation in the Collective Brain’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 371, no. 1690 (2016): 20150192
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  39. Nielsen, Mark, Keyan Tomaselli, Ilana Mushin et al., ‘Exploring Tool Innovation: A Comparison of Western and Bushman Children’, Journal of Experimental Child Psychology 126 (2014): 384–94
  40. Nisbett, Richard E., Joshua Aronson, Clancy Blair et al., ‘Intelligence: New Findings and Theoretical Developments’, American Psychologist 67, no. 2 (2012): 130
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  42. Pemberton, Trevor J., Michael DeGiorgio, and Noah A. Rosenberg, ‘Population Structure in a Comprehensive Genomic Data Set on Human Microsatellite Variation’, G3: Genes, Genomes, Genetics 3, no. 5 (2013): 891–907
  43. Pickrell, Joseph K., and David Reich, ‘Toward a New History and Geography of Human Genes Informed by Ancient DNA’, Trends in Genetics 30, no. 9 (2014): 377–89
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  45. Platt, Jonathan M., Katherine M. Keyes, Katie A. McLaughlin et al., ‘The Flynn Effect for Fluid IQ May Not Generalize to All Ages or Ability Levels: A Population-based Study of 10,000 US Adolescents’, Intelligence 77 (2019): 101385
  46. Plomin, Robert, Blueprint, with a New Afterword: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are, MIT Press, 2019
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  50. Ritchie, Stuart, and Elliot M. Tucker-Drob, ‘How Much Does Education Improve Intelligence? A Meta-analysis’, Psychological Science 29, no. 8 (2018): 1358–69
  51. Rosenberg, Noah A., Jonathan K. Pritchard, James L. Weber et al., ‘Genetic Structure of Human Populations’, Science 298, no. 5602 (2002): 2381–5
  52. Roser, Max, and Esteban Ortiz-Ospina, ‘Literacy’, Our World in Data, 2016, https://ourworldindata.org/literacy
  53. St Clair, James J. H., Barbara C. Klump, Shoko Sugasawa et al., ‘Hook Innovation Boosts Foraging Efficiency in Tool-using Crows’, Nature Ecology & Evolution 2, no. 3 (2018): 441–4
  54. Samuelsson, Stefan, Brian Byrne, Richard K. Olson et al., ‘Response to Early Literacy Instruction in the United States, Australia, and Scandinavia: A Behavioral–Genetic Analysis’, Learning and Individual Differences 18, no. 3 (2008): 289–95
  55. Sowell, Thomas, Affirmative Action around the World: An Empirical Study, Yale University Press, 2004
  56. Teferra, Damtew, and Philip G. Altbach, African Higher Education: An International Reference Handbook, Indiana University Press, 2003
  57. Thöni, Christian, and Stefan Volk, ‘Converging Evidence for Greater Male Variability in Time, Risk, and Social Preferences’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 118, no. 23 (2021): e2026112118
  58. Thöni, Christian, Stefan Volk, and Jose M. Cortina, ‘Greater Male Variability in Cooperation: Meta-analytic Evidence for an Evolutionary Perspective’, Psychological Science 32, no. 1 (2021): 50–63
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Chapter 4: Innovation in the Collective Brain

For examples of the path dependence that has led to modern US regional cultures see Colin Woodard, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, Penguin, 2012; and David Hackett Fischer, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, Oxford University Press, 1989. Eric Hobsbawm and Terence Ranger, eds, The Invention of Tradition, Cambridge University Press, 2012, provides examples of path dependence in traditions we think are more ancient than they are.

On tolerance for diversity and innovation see Michele Gelfand, Rule Makers, Rule Breakers: Tight and Loose Cultures and the Secret Signals That Direct Our Lives, Scribner, 2019.

Two books that reveal the complexity of even very ordinary aspects of the world are Lewis Dartnell, The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch, Random House, 2014; and Ryan North, How to Invent Everything: Rebuild All of Civilization (with 96% Fewer Catastrophes This Time), Random House, 2018.

Discussions of the conditions that led to the Enlightenment and Industrial Revolution are offered by Joel Mokyr in The Enlightened Economy: An Economic History of Britain, 1700–1850, Yale University Press, 2009; and A Culture of Growth, Princeton University Press, 2016.

Specific and specialist reading

  1. Becker, Sascha O., Erik Hornung, and Ludger Woessmann, ‘Education and Catch-up in the Industrial Revolution’, American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics 3, no. 3 (2011): 92–126
  2. Bernard, Diane, How a Miracle Drug Changed the Fight against Infection during World War II, Washington Post, 2020
  3. Bradley, David, ‘Impossibly Amorphous Material Synthesized’, Materials Today 9, no. 16 (2013): 304
  4. De Sousa, Telma, Miguel Ribeiro, and Carolina Sabença, ‘The 10,000-Year Success Story of Wheat!’, Foods 10, no. 9 (2021): 2124
  5. Dehaene, Stanislas, The Number Sense: How the Mind Creates Mathematics, Oxford University Press, 2011
  6. Edvinsson, Rodney, and Johan Söderberg, ‘Prices and the Growth of the European Knowledge Economy, 1200–2007’, in Swedish Economic History Meeting, Uppsala, 5–7 March 2009, pp. 1–21
  7. Forsyth, Mark, The Elements of Eloquence: How to Turn the Perfect English Phrase, Icon Books, 2013
  8. Gilbert, Will, Tuomo Tanttu, Wee Han Lim et al., ‘On-demand Electrical Control of Spin Qubits’, Nature Nanotechnology (12 January 2023): 1–6. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41565-022-01280-4
  9. Henrich, Joseph, ‘Demography and Cultural Evolution: How Adaptive Cultural Processes Can Produce Maladaptive Losses – the Tasmanian Case’, American Antiquity 69, no. 2 (2004): 197–214
  10. Kauffman, Stuart A., Investigations, Oxford University Press, 2000
  11. Kebric, Robert B., Roman People, McGraw-Hill, 2005
  12. Kline, Michelle A., and Robert Boyd, ‘Population Size Predicts Technological Complexity in Oceania’, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 277, no. 1693 (2010): 2559–64
  13. Lewis, Michael, The Undoing Project: A Friendship That Changed the World, Penguin, 2016
  14. Liu, Yi-Ping, Gui-Sheng Wu, Yong-Gang Yao et al., ‘Multiple Maternal Origins of Chickens: Out of the Asian Jungles’, Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 38, no. 1 (2006): 12–19
  15. Love, John F., McDonald's: Behind the Arches, Random House, 1995
  16. McTavish, Emily Jane, Jared E. Decker, Robert D. Schnabel et al., ‘New World Cattle Show Ancestry from Multiple Independent Domestication Events’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 110, no. 15 (2013): e1398–406
  17. March, Richard, Charles Goodyear and the Strange Story of Rubber, Reader's Digest, 1958
  18. Muthukrishna, Michael, and Joseph Henrich, ‘Innovation in the Collective Brain’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 371, no. 1690 (2016): 20150192
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Chapter 5: Created by Culture

Some of the most accessible introductions to cultural evolution, dual inheritance theory, and culture-gene co-evolution are Joseph Henrich's The Secret of Our Success, Princeton University Press, 2015, and The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous, Penguin, 2020; Kevin N. Laland, Darwin's Unfinished Symphony, Princeton University Press, 2018; Robert Boyd, A Different Kind of Animal, Princeton University Press, 2017; Leslie Newson and Peter Richerson, A Story of Us: A New Look at Human Evolution, Oxford University Press, 2021; and Alex Mesoudi, Cultural Evolution, University of Chicago Press, 2011. The self-domestication hypothesis is nicely described by Brian Hare and Vanessa Woods in Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity, Random House, 2021.

The psychology of childhood is examined by Alison Gopnik in The Gardener and the Carpenter: What the New Science of Child Development Tells Us about the Relationship between Parents and Children, Macmillan, 2016; and the history of menopause is charted by Susan Mattern in The Slow Moon Climbs: The Science, History, and Meaning of Menopause, Princeton University Press, 2019.

Specific and specialist reading

  1. Aiello, Leslie C., and Peter Wheeler, ‘The Expensive-Tissue Hypothesis: The Brain and the Digestive System in Human and Primate Evolution’, Current Anthropology 36, no. 2 (1995): 199–221
  2. Alesina, Alberto, Paola Giuliano, and Nathan Nunn, ‘On the Origins of Gender Roles: Women and the Plough’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 128, no. 2 (2013): 469–530
  3. Becker, Anke, ‘On the Economic Origins of Restricting Women's Promiscuity’, Review of Economic Studies (forthcoming)
  4. Betran, Ana Pilar, Jiangfeng Ye, Ann-Beth Moller et al., ‘Trends and Projections of Caesarean Section Rates: Global and Regional Estimates’, BMJ Global Health 6, no. 6 (2021): e005671
  5. Christiansen, Morten H., and Nick Chater, Creating Language: Integrating Evolution, Acquisition, and Processing, MIT Press, 2016
  6. Chudek, Maciej, Michael Muthukrishna, and Joe Henrich, ‘Cultural Evolution’, in The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, pp. 1–21, Wiley, 2015
  7. Dominguez-Bello, Maria G., Kassandra M. De Jesus-Laboy, Nan Shen et al., ‘Partial Restoration of the Microbiota of Cesarean-born Infants via Vaginal Microbial Transfer’, Nature Medicine 22, no. 3 (2016): 250–3
  8. Dunbar, Robin I. M., ‘The Social Brain Hypothesis’, Evolutionary Anthropology 6, no. 5 (1998): 178–90
  9. Enard, Wolfgang, Molly Przeworski, Simon E. Fisher et al., ‘Molecular Evolution of FOXP2, a Gene Involved in Speech and Language’, Nature 418, no. 6900 (2002): 869–72
  10. Fox, K. C., M. Muthukrishna, and S. Shultz, ‘The Social and Cultural Roots of Whale and Dolphin Brains’, Nature Ecology & Evolution 1, no. 11 (2017): 1699–705
  11. Gneezy, Uri, Kenneth L. Leonard, and John A. List, ‘Gender Differences in Competition: Evidence from a Matrilineal and a Patriarchal Society’, Econometrica 77, no. 5 (2009): 1637–64
  12. Haeusler, Martin, Nicole D. S. Grunstra, Robert D. Martin et al., ‘The Obstetrical Dilemma Hypothesis: There's Life in the Old Dog Yet’, Biological Reviews 96, no. 5 (2021): 2031–57
  13. Hare, Brian, ‘Survival of the Friendliest: Homo Sapiens Evolved Via Selection for Prosociality’, Annual Review of Psychology 68 (2017): 155–86
  14. Hare, Brian, and Vanessa Woods, Survival of the Friendliest: Understanding Our Origins and Rediscovering Our Common Humanity, Random House, 2021
  15. Hawkes, Kristen, James F. O’Connell, N. G. Blurton Jones et al., ‘Grandmothering, Menopause, and the Evolution of Human Life Histories’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 95, no. 3 (1998): 1336–9
  16. Henrich, Joseph, Robert Boyd, and Peter J. Richerson, ‘The Puzzle of Monogamous Marriage’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 367, no. 1589 (2012): 657–69
  17. Henrich, Joseph, and Richard McElreath, ‘The Evolution of Cultural Evolution’, Evolutionary Anthropology 12, no. 3 (2003): 123–35
  18. Henrich, Joseph, and Michael Muthukrishna, ‘The Origins and Psychology of Human Cooperation’, Annual Review of Psychology 72 (2021): 207–40
  19. Hrdy, Sarah Blaffer, ‘Evolutionary Context of Human Development: The Cooperative Breeding Model’, in Family Relationships: An Evolutionary Perspective, ed. Catherine A. Salmon and Todd K. Shackelford, pp. 39–68, Oxford University Press, 2006
  20. ——, Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding, Harvard University Press, 2009
  21. Kramer, Karen L., ‘Cooperative Breeding and Its Significance to the Demographic Success of Humans’, Annual Review of Anthropology 39 (2010): 417–36
  22. Lassek, William D., and Steven J. C. Gaulin, ‘Costs and Benefits of Fat-free Muscle Mass in Men: Relationship to Mating Success, Dietary Requirements, and Native Immunity’, Evolution and Human Behavior 30, no. 5 (2009): 322–8
  23. Lind, Johan, and Patrik Lindenfors, ‘The Number of Cultural Traits Is Correlated with Female Group Size but Not with Male Group Size in Chimpanzee Communities’, PloS ONE 5, no. 3 (2010): e9241
  24. Lipschuetz, Michal, Sarah M. Cohen, Eliana Ein-Mor et al., ‘A Large Head Circumference Is more Strongly Associated with Unplanned Cesarean or Instrumental Delivery and Neonatal Complications than High Birthweight’, American Journal of Obstetrics and Gynecology 213, no. 6 (2015): 833.e1–833.e12
  25. Lonsdorf, Elizabeth V., ‘What Is the Role of Mothers in the Acquisition of Termite-Fishing Behaviors in Wild Chimpanzees (Pan Troglodytes Schweinfurthii)?’, Animal Cognition 9 (2006): 36–46
  26. Mattison, Siobhán M., Brooke Scelza, and Tami Blumenfield, ‘Paternal Investment and the Positive Effects of Fathers among the Matrilineal Mosuo of Southwest China’, American Anthropologist 116, no. 3 (2014): 591–610
  27. Mesoudi, Alex, Andrew Whiten, and Kevin N. Laland, ‘Towards a Unified Science of Cultural Evolution’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 29, no. 4 (2006): 329–47
  28. Muthukrishna, Michael, Michael Doebeli, Maciej Chudek et al., ‘The Cultural Brain Hypothesis: How Culture Drives Brain Expansion, Sociality, and Life History’, PLoS Computational Biology 14, no. 11 (2018): e1006504
  29. Navarrete, Ana, Carel P. Van Schaik, and Karin Isler, ‘Energetics and the Evolution of Human Brain Size’, Nature 480, no. 7375 (2011): 91–3
  30. Pruetz, Jill D., and Paco Bertolani, ‘Savanna Chimpanzees, Pan Troglodytes Verus, Hunt with Tools’, Current Biology 17, no. 5 (2007): 412–17
  31. Ruff, C. B., E. Trinkaus, and T. W. Holliday, ‘Body Mass and Encephalization in Pleistocene Homo’, Nature, 387 (1997): 173–6
  32. Smith, J., F. Plaat, and Nicholas M. Fisk, ‘The Natural Caesarean: A Woman‐centred Technique’, BJOG: An International Journal of Obstetrics & Gynaecology 115, no. 8 (2008): 1037–42
  33. Somers, Ali, The Intergenerational Programme at Nightingale House: A Study into the Impact on the Well-being of Elderly Residents, Nightingale Hammerson, 2019
  34. Wrangham, Richard, Catching Fire: How Cooking Made Us Human, Basic Books, 2009

Chapter 6: Cooperation

Some accessible books on cooperation are Joseph Henrich, The WEIRDest People in the World: How the West became Psychologically Peculiar and Particularly Prosperous, Penguin, 2020; Nichola Raihani, The Social Instinct: How Cooperation Shaped the World, Random House, 2021; Martin A. Nowak and Roger Highfield, Supercooperators, Canongate, 2011; Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, Mothers and Others: The Evolutionary Origins of Mutual Understanding, Harvard University Press, 2009; David Sloan Wilson, This View of Life: Completing the Darwinian Revolution, Vintage, 2020; and Oren Harman, The Price of Altruism: George Price and the Search for the Origins of Kindness, W. W. Norton, 2011.

For the psychology and evolution of morality and religion see Ara Norenzayan, Big Gods: How Religion Transformed Cooperation and Conflict, Princeton University Press, 2013; Henrich's The WEIRDest People in the World; and Joshua Greene, Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap between Us and Them, Penguin, 2014.

There are two books by Steven Pinker on the long peace: The Better Angels of Our Nature: The Decline of Violence in History and Its Causes, Penguin, 2011, and Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress, Penguin, 2018.

For a history of microchip manufacturing see Chris Miller, Chip War: The Fight for the World's Most Critical Technology, Simon & Schuster, 2022.

Specific and specialist reading

  1. Acemoglu, Daron, David Autor, David Dorn et al., ‘Return of the Solow Paradox? IT, Productivity, and Employment in US Manufacturing’, American Economic Review 104, no. 5 (2014): 394–9
  2. Alexander, Richard D., ‘The Biology of Moral Systems’, Routledge, 1987
  3. Baldwin, Richard, The Great Convergence: Information Technology and the New Globalization, Harvard University Press, 2016
  4. Biden, Joseph, ‘Remarks by President Biden on Afghanistan’, speech, The White House, 16 August 2021, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2021/08/16/remarks-by-president-biden-on-afghanistan/
  5. Cowen, Tyler, The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better: A Penguin eSpecial from Dutton, Penguin, 2011
  6. Dawkins, Richard, The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, 1976
  7. Eurostat, ‘Employees by Sex, Age, Educational Attainment Level, Work Experience While Studying and Method Used for Finding Current Job’, LFSO_16FINDMET, Eurostat, 2022
  8. Fehr, Ernst, and Simon Gächter, ‘Cooperation and Punishment in Public Goods Experiments’, American Economic Review 90, no. 4 (2000): 980–94
  9. Finke, Roger, and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776–2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy, Rutgers University Press, 2005
  10. Fisher, Ronald A., The Genetical Theory of Natural Selection, Clarendon Press, 1930
  11. Haji, Nafisa, The Sweetness of Tears, William Morrow, 2011
  12. Hamilton, William D., ‘The Genetical Theory of Social Behaviour. I, II’, Journal of Theoretical Biology 7 (1964): 1–52
  13. Hardin, Garrett, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science 162, no. 3859 (1968): 1243–8
  14. Henrich, Joseph, ‘Does Culture Matter in Economic Behavior? Ultimatum Game Bargaining among the Machiguenga of the Peruvian Amazon’, American Economic Review 90, no. 4 (2000): 973–9
  15. ——, ‘Cultural Group Selection, Coevolutionary Processes and Large-scale Cooperation’, Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization 53, no. 1 (2004): 3–35
  16. Henrich, Joseph, Robert Boyd, Samuel Bowles et al., ‘In Search of Homo Economicus: Behavioral Experiments in 15 Small-scale Societies’, American Economic Review 91, no. 2 (2001): 73–8
  17. Henrich, Joseph, Robert Boyd, Ernst Fehr et al., eds, Foundations of Human Sociality: Economic Experiments and Ethnographic Evidence from Fifteen Small-scale Societies, Oxford University Press on Demand, 2004
  18. Henrich, Joseph, and Michael Muthukrishna, ‘The Origins and Psychology of Human Cooperation’, Annual Review of Psychology 72 (2021): 207–40
  19. Ito, Koichi, and Michael Doebeli, ‘The Joint Evolution of Cooperation and Competition’, Journal of Theoretical Biology 480 (2019): 1–12
  20. Kant, Immanuel, The ‘Metaphysics of Ethics’, T. & T. Clark, 1796
  21. ——, Physical Geography, T. & T. Clark, 1802
  22. Klitgaard, Robert E., Ronald MacLean Abaroa, and H. Lindsey Parris, Corrupt Cities: A Practical Guide to Cure and Prevention, World Bank Publications, 2000
  23. Lugo, Luis, Alan Cooperman, James Bell et al., ‘The World's Muslims: Religion, Politics and Society’, Pew Research Center, 2013
  24. Morris, Ian, Why the West Rules – For Now: The Patterns of History and What They Reveal about the Future, Profile, 2010
  25. Muthukrishna, Michael, Patrick Francois, Shayan Pourahmadi et al., ‘Corrupting Cooperation and How Anti-corruption Strategies May Backfire’, Nature Human Behaviour 1, no. 7 (2017): 0138
  26. Muthukrishna, Michael, Joseph Henrich, and Edward Slingerland, ‘Psychology as a Historical Science’, Annual Review of Psychology 72 (2021): 717–49
  27. Norenzayan, Ara, Azim F. Shariff, Will M. Gervais et al., ‘The Cultural Evolution of Prosocial Religions’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 39 (2016): e1
  28. Nowak, Martin A., ‘Five Rules for the Evolution of Cooperation’, Science 314, no. 5805 (2006): 1560–3
  29. Nowak, Martin A., and K. Sigmund, ‘The Dynamics of Indirect Reciprocity’, Journal of Theoretical Biology 194 (1998): 561–74
  30. ——, ‘Evolution of Indirect Reciprocity’, Nature 437, no. 7063 (2005): 1291–8
  31. Okasha, Samir, Evolution and the Levels of Selection, Clarendon Press, 2006
  32. Ostrom, Elinor, Governing the Commons: The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, Cambridge University Press, 1990
  33. Pacheco, Jorge M., Francisco C. Santos, Max O. Souza et al., ‘Evolutionary Dynamics of Collective Action in N-Person Stag Hunt Dilemmas’, Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 276, no. 1655 (2009): 315–21
  34. Panchanathan, Karthik, and Robert Boyd, ‘Indirect Reciprocity Can Stabilize Cooperation without the Second-order Free Rider Problem’, Nature 432, no. 7016 (2004): 499–502
  35. Pennisi, Elizabeth, ‘How Did Cooperative Behavior Evolve?’, Science 309, no. 5731 (2005): 93
  36. Pomeranz, Kenneth, The Great Divergence: China, Europe, and the Making of the Modern World Economy, Princeton University Press, 2021
  37. Price, George R., ‘Selection and Covariance’, Nature 227 (1970): 520–1
  38. ——, ‘Extension of Covariance Selection Mathematics’, Annals of Human Genetics 35, no. 4 (1972): 485–90
  39. Richerson, Peter, Ryan Baldini, Adrian V. Bell et al., ‘Cultural Group Selection Plays an Essential Role in Explaining Human Cooperation: A Sketch of the Evidence’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 39 (2016): e30
  40. Saify, Khyber, and Mostafa Saadat, ‘Consanguineous Marriages in Afghanistan’, Journal of Biosocial Science 44, no. 1 (2012): 73–81
  41. Schnell, Eric, Robin Schimmelpfennig, and Michael Muthukrishna, ‘The Size of the Stag Determines the Level of Cooperation’, bioRxiv (2021): 2021–2
  42. Skyrms, Brian, The Stag Hunt and the Evolution of Social Structure, Cambridge University Press, 2004
  43. Smith, J. Maynard, ‘Group Selection and Kin Selection’, Nature 201, no. 4924 (1964): 1145–7
  44. Solow, Robert, ‘We'd Better Watch Out’, New York Times Book Review 36 (1987): 36
  45. Toje, A., and N. V. Steen, The Causes of Peace: What We Know Now, Nobel Peace Prize Research & Information, 2019
  46. Treisman, Daniel, ‘What Have We Learned about the Causes of Corruption from Ten Years of Cross-national Empirical Research?’, Annual Review of Political Science 10, no. 1 (June 2007): 211–44
  47. Trivers, Robert L., ‘The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism’, Quarterly Review of Biology 46, no. 1 (1971): 35–57
  48. Trompenaars, Fons, and Charles Hampden-Turner, Riding the Waves of Culture: Understanding Diversity in Global Business, Nicholas Brealey International, 2011
  49. Wilson, David Sloan, ‘A Theory of Group Selection’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 72, no. 1 (1975): 143–6

Part II: Where We're Going

The opening quote from Edward Wilson comes from the second paragraph of Chapter 1 of The Social Conquest of Earth, W. W. Norton, 2012.

Specific and specialist reading

  1. ‘Does the Current Migrant Crisis in Europe Make You More or Less Likely to Vote to Leave the EU?’, What UK Thinks: EU opinion poll, 2015
  2. Ash, Konstantin, and Nick Obradovich, ‘Climatic Stress, Internal Migration, and Syrian Civil War Onset’, Journal of Conflict Resolution 64, no. 1 (2020): 3–31
  3. Burke, Marshall B., Edward Miguel, Shanker Satyanath et al., ‘Warming Increases the Risk of Civil War in Africa’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 106, no. 49 (2009): 20670–4
  4. Golec de Zavala, Agnieszka, Rita Guerra, and Cláudia Simão, ‘The Relationship between the Brexit Vote and Individual Predictors of Prejudice: Collective Narcissism, Right Wing Authoritarianism, Social Dominance Orientation’, Frontiers in Psychology 8 (2017): 2023
  5. Hall, Charles A. S., and Kent Klitgaard, Energy and the Wealth of Nations: An Introduction to Biophysical Economics, 2nd edn, Springer, 2018
  6. Hsiang, Solomon M., Marshall Burke, and Edward Miguel, ‘Quantifying the Influence of Climate on Human Conflict’, Science 341, no. 6151 (2013): 1235367
  7. Kelley, Colin P., Shahrzad Mohtadi, Mark A. Cane et al., ‘Climate Change in the Fertile Crescent and Implications of the Recent Syrian Drought’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 11 (2015): 3241–6
  8. Koubi, Vally, ‘Climate Change and Conflict’, Annual Review of Political Science 22 (2019): 343–60
  9. Schleussner, Carl-Friedrich, Jonathan F. Donges, Reik V. Donner et al., ‘Armed-Conflict Risks Enhanced by Climate-related Disasters in Ethnically Fractionalized Countries’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 113, no. 33 (2016): 9216–21

Chapter 7: Reuniting Humanity

On polarization in America see Jonathan Haidt, The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion, Vintage, 2012; Chris Bail, Breaking the Social Media Prism: How to Make Our Platforms Less Polarizing, Princeton University Press, 2022; Sinan Aral, The Hype Machine: How Social Media Disrupts Our Elections, Our Economy, and Our Health—and How We Must Adapt, Currency, 2021; Lilliana Mason, Uncivil Agreement: How Politics Became Our Identity, University of Chicago Press, 2018; and James E. Campbell, Polarized: Making Sense of a Divided America, Princeton University Press, 2018.

For the effects of the private school pipeline and similar issues of inequality in the UK, US, and elsewhere see Simon Kuper, Chums: How a Tiny Caste of Oxford Tories Took Over the UK, Profile, 2022; Richard Reeves, Dream Hoarders: How the American Upper Middle Class Is Leaving Everyone Else in the Dust, Why That Is a Problem, and What to Do About It, Brookings Institution Press, 2017; and Anand Giridharadas, Winners Take All: The Elite Charade of Changing the World, Knopf, 2018.

The role East–West versus North–South geography plays in innovation is explored by Jared M. Diamond in Guns, Germs and Steel: A Short History of Everybody for the Last 13,000 Years, Random House, 1998. The role of coder culture in creating the Internet is described by Clive Thompson in Coders: The Making of a New Tribe and the Remaking of the World, Penguin, 2019; and corruption in Australia is examined in Cameron K. Murray and Paul Frijters, Rigged: How Networks of Powerful Mates Rip Off Everyday Australians, Allen & Unwin, 2022.

On immigration see the following: Bryan Caplan, Open Borders: The Science and Ethics of Immigration, First Second, 2019; Garett Jones, The Culture Transplant: How Migrants Make the Economies They Move to a Lot Like the Ones They Left, Stanford University Press, 2022; and Ran Abramitzky and Leah Boustan, Streets of Gold: America's Untold Story of Immigrant Success, Hachette, 2022.

Specific and specialist reading

  1. Alesina, Alberto, Paola Giuliano, and Nathan Nunn, ‘On the Origins of Gender Roles: Women and the Plough’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 128, no. 2 (2013): 469–530
  2. Algan, Yann, Christian Dustmann, Albrecht Glitz et al., ‘The Economic Situation of First and Second‐Generation Immigrants in France, Germany and the United Kingdom’, Economic Journal 120 (2010): F4–30
  3. Andersen, S. N., and T. Kornstad, ‘Time since Immigration and Crime amongst Adult Immigrants in Norway’, Government report, Statistics Norway, 2017, https://www.ssb.no/sosiale-forhold-og-kriminalitet/artikler-og-publikasjoner/_attachment/332400?_ts=1603007dd70
  4. Andersen, S. N., B. Holtsmark, and S. B. Mohn, ‘Crime amongst Immigrants, Children of Immigrants and the Remaining Population: An Analysis of Register Data 1992–2015 Reports 2017/36’, Government report, Statistics Norway, 2017, https://www.ssb.no/sosiale-forhold-ogkriminalitet/artikler-og-publikasjoner/_attachment/332143?_ts=16035d6f0d8
  5. Australian Government, Department of Home Affairs, ‘Australian Cultural Orientation (AUSCO) Program’, Immigration and Citizenship online overview, 2019, https://immi.homeaffairs.gov.au/settling-in-australia/ausco
  6. Aydemir, Abdurrahman, and George J. Borjas, ‘Cross-country Variation in the Impact of International Migration: Canada, Mexico, and the United States’, Journal of the European Economic Association 5, no. 4 (2007): 663–708
  7. Beaulier, Scott A., ‘Explaining Botswana's Success: The Critical Role of Post-colonial Policy’, Cato Journal 23, no. 2 (2003): 227–40
  8. Bertrand, Marianne, and Sendhil Mullainathan, ‘Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination’, American Economic Review 94, no. 4 (2004): 991–1013
  9. Beveridge, William, ‘Social Insurance and Allied Services’, command paper 6404 (The Beveridge Report), His Majesty's Stationery Office, 1942
  10. Bloemraad, Irene, Anna Korteweg, and Gökçe Yurdakul, ‘Citizenship and Immigration: Multiculturalism, Assimilation, and Challenges to the Nation-state’, Annual Review of Sociology 34 (2008): 153–79
  11. Brubaker, Rogers, Citizenship and Nationhood in France and Germany, Harvard University Press, 2009
  12. Chetty, Raj, John N. Friedman, and Emmanuel Saez, ‘Using Differences in Knowledge across Neighborhoods to Uncover the Impacts of the EITC on Earnings’, American Economic Review 103, no. 7 (2013): 2683–721
  13. Christophers, Brett, Rentier Capitalism: Who Owns the Economy, and Who Pays for It?, Verso, 2022
  14. Cohen, Roger, ‘Can-Do Lee Kuan Yew’, New York Times, 24 March 2015
  15. Day, Richard J. F., Multiculturalism and the History of Canadian Diversity, University of Toronto Press, 2000
  16. Dustmann, Christian, and Tommaso Frattini, ‘The Fiscal Effects of Immigration to the UK’, Economic Journal 124, no. 580 (2014): F593–643
  17. Dustmann, Christian, and Ian P. Preston, ‘Free Movement, Open Borders, and the Global Gains from Labor Mobility’, Annual Review of Economics 11 (2019): 783–808
  18. Fasting, Mathilde, and Øystein Sørensen, The Norwegian Exception? Norway's Liberal Democracy since 1814, Hurst, 2021
  19. Fischer, David Hackett, Albion's Seed: Four British Folkways in America, Oxford University Press, 1989
  20. Fisher, Matthew C., Sarah J. Gurr, Christina A. Cuomo et al., ‘Threats Posed by the Fungal Kingdom to Humans, Wildlife, and Agriculture’, mBio 11, no. 3 (2020): e00449–20
  21. Frijters, Paul, and Cameron Murray, Rigged: How Networks of Powerful Mates Rip Off Everyday Australians, Allen & Unwin, 2022
  22. ‘Germany's Vice Chancellor Says Merkel Underestimated Migrant Challenge’, Reuters, 27 August 2016
  23. Gerring, John, Michael Hoffman, and Dominic Zarecki, ‘The Diverse Effects of Diversity on Democracy’, British Journal of Political Science 48, no. 2 (2018): 283–314
  24. Giuliano, Paola, and Nathan Nunn, ’The Transmission of Democracy: From the Village to the Nation-State’, American Economic Review 103, no. 3 (2013): 86–92
  25. ——, ‘Understanding Cultural Persistence and Change’, Review of Economic Studies 88, no. 4 (2021): 1541–81
  26. Gleason, Philip, ‘The Melting Pot: Symbol of Fusion or Confusion?’, American Quarterly 16, no. 1 (1964): 20–46
  27. Gudelunas, David, ‘There's an App for That: The Uses and Gratifications of Online Social Networks for Gay Men’, Sexuality & Culture 16 (2012): 347–65
  28. Heine, Steven J., Cultural Psychology: Fourth International Student Edition, W. W. Norton, 2020
  29. Holden, Steinar, ‘Avoiding the Resource Curse the Case Norway’, Energy Policy 63 (2013): 870–6
  30. Huntington, Samuel P., and Steve R. Dunn, Who Are We? The Challenges to America's National Identity, Simon & Schuster, 2004
  31. Jack, Rachael E., Oliver G. B. Garrod, Hui Yu et al., ‘Facial Expressions of Emotion Are Not Culturally Universal’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 109, no. 19 (2012): 7241–4
  32. Khoshnood, Ardavan, Henrik Ohlsson, Jan Sundquist et al., ‘Swedish Rape Offenders – a Latent Class Analysis’, Forensic Sciences Research 6, no. 2 (2021): 124–32
  33. Kriminalität im Kontext von Zuwanderung: Bundeslagebild (Crime in the Context of Immigration: National Situation Report), Bundeskriminalamt, 2017
  34. Landgrave, Michelangelo, and Alex Nowrasteh, Illegal Immigrant Incarceration Rates, 2010–2018: Demographics and Policy Implications, Cato Institute, 2020
  35. Lochmann, Alexia, Hillel Rapoport, and Biagio Speciale, ‘The Effect of Language Training on Immigrants’ Economic Integration: Empirical Evidence from France’, European Economic Review 113 (2019): 265–96
  36. Luttmer, Erzo F. P., and Monica Singhal, ‘Culture, Context, and the Taste for Redistribution’, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 3, no. 1 (2011): 157–79
  37. Meng, Xin, and Robert G. Gregory, ‘Intermarriage and the Economic Assimilation of Immigrants’, Journal of Labor Economics 23, no. 1 (2005): 135–74
  38. Michalopoulos, Stelios, and Elias Papaioannou, ‘The Long-run Effects of the Scramble for Africa’, American Economic Review 106, no. 7 (2016): 1802–48
  39. Miller, Paul W., ‘Immigration Policy and Immigrant Quality: The Australian Points System’, American Economic Review 89, no. 2 (1999): 192–7
  40. Moser, Petra, and Shmuel San, ‘Immigration, Science, and Invention: Lessons from the Quota Acts’, Social Science Research Network, 2020
  41. Muthukrishna, Michael, Adrian V. Bell, Joseph Henrich et al., ‘Beyond Western, Educated, Industrial, Rich, and Democratic (WEIRD) Psychology: Measuring and Mapping Scales of Cultural and Psychological Distance’, Psychological Science 31, no. 6 (2020): 678–701
  42. Nisbett, Richard E., and Dov Cohen, Culture of Honor: The Psychology of Violence in the South, Routledge, 2018
  43. Nowrasteh, Alex, Andrew C. Forrester, and Michelangelo Landgrave, ‘Illegal Immigration and Crime in Texas’, working paper no. 60, Cato Institute, 2020
  44. Oreopoulos, Philip, ‘Why Do Skilled Immigrants Struggle in the Labor Market? A Field Experiment with Thirteen Thousand Resumes’, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 3, no. 4 (2011): 148–71
  45. Pirsig, Robert M., Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance: An Inquiry into Values, Random House, 1999
  46. Poole, Michael, and Rachel Bell, ‘Middle Classes – Their Rise and Sprawl’, BBC, 2001.
  47. Pratchett, Terry, Raising Steam (Discworld novel 40), Random House, 2013
  48. Read, Michael, ‘Australians Are the World's Richest People’, Financial Review, 20 September 2022
  49. Rosenberg, Steve, ‘Why Russian Workers Are Being Taught How to Smile’, BBC News, 9 June 2018
  50. Ross, Michael L., ‘What Have We Learned about the Resource Curse?’, Annual Review of Political Science 18 (2015): 239–59
  51. Rychlowska, Magdalena, Yuri Miyamoto, David Matsumoto et al., ‘Heterogeneity of Long-History Migration Explains Cultural Differences in Reports of Emotional Expressivity and the Functions of Smiles’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 112, no. 19 (12 May 2015): E2429–36.
  52. Schimmelpfennig, Robin, Layla Razek, Eric Schnell et al., ‘Paradox of Diversity in the Collective Brain’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 377, no. 1843 (2022): 20200316
  53. Schulz, Jonathan F., Duman Bahrami-Rad, Jonathan P. Beauchamp et al., ‘The Church, Intensive Kinship, and Global Psychological Variation’, Science 366, no. 6466 (2019): eaau5141
  54. Sequeira, Sandra, Nathan Nunn, and Nancy Qian, ‘Immigrants and the Making of America’, Review of Economic Studies 87, no. 1 (2020): 382–419
  55. Silver, Laura, ‘Populists in Europe – Especially Those on the Right – Have Increased Their Vote Shares in Recent Elections’, Pew Research Center, 2022
  56. Simon, Rita J., and Keri W. Sikich, ‘Public Attitudes toward Immigrants and Immigration Policies across Seven Nations’, International Migration Review 41, no. 4 (2007): 956–62
  57. Skardhamar, Torbjørn, Mikko Aaltonen, and Martti Lehti, ‘Immigrant Crime in Norway and Finland’, Journal of Scandinavian Studies in Criminology and Crime Prevention 15, no. 2 (2014): 107–27
  58. Steinmayr, Andreas, ‘Contact versus Exposure: Refugee Presence and Voting for the Far Right’, Review of Economics and Statistics 103, no. 2 (2021): 310–27
  59. Strafurteilsstatistik 2020: Nationalitäten der verurteilten Personen (Criminal Conviction Statistics 2020: Nationalities of the Convicted Persons), Swiss Federal Office for Statistics, 2020
  60. Tabellini, Marco, ‘Gifts of the Immigrants, Woes of the Natives: Lessons from the Age of Mass Migration’, Review of Economic Studies 87, no. 1 (2020): 454–86
  61. Van der Ploeg, Frederick, ‘Natural Resources: Curse or Blessing?’, Journal of Economic Literature 49, no. 2 (2011): 366–420
  62. Watson, James L., ed., Golden Arches East: McDonald's in East Asia, Stanford University Press, 2006
  63. Wood, Adrienne, Magdalena Rychlowska, and Paula M. Niedenthal, ‘Heterogeneity of Long-History Migration Predicts Emotion Recognition Accuracy’, Emotion 16, no. 4 (2016): 413–20
  64. Woodard, Colin, American Nations: A History of the Eleven Rival Regional Cultures of North America, Penguin, 2012

Chapter 8: Governance in the Twenty-first Century

For a history of democracy, cooperation, and political order there are two books by Francis Fukuyama: The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2011; and Political Order and Political Decay: From the Industrial Revolution to the Globalization of Democracy, Macmillan, 2014. For a similar vision for start-up cities see the Charter Cities Institute's continually updated reading list, https://chartercitiesinstitute.org/reading/

For a concept close to programmable politics see Balaji Srinivasan, The Network State: How to Start a New Country, 2022. Commentary from Vitalik Buterin (inventor of Ethereum) is at https://vitalik.ca/general/2022/07/13/networkstates.html, and Buterin has also co-authored (with Nathan Schneider) a book on blockchain and Ethereum, Proof of Stake: The Making of Ethereum and the Philosophy of Blockchains, Seven Stories Press, 2022.

Some of the radical ideas being proposed that could be tested within start-up cities or programmed polities can be found in Eric A. Posner and E. Glen Weyl's Radical Markets, Princeton University Press, 2018.

Specific and specialist reading

  1. Berlin, Leslie, The Man Behind the Microchip: Robert Noyce and the Invention of Silicon Valley, Oxford University Press, 2005
  2. Chesterton, Gilbert Keith, Orthodoxy, Bodley Head, 1908
  3. Etzkowitz, Henry, and Chunyan Zhou, The Triple Helix: University–Industry–Government Innovation and Entrepreneurship, Routledge, 2017
  4. Finke, Roger, and Rodney Stark, The Churching of America, 1776–2005: Winners and Losers in Our Religious Economy, Rutgers University Press, 2005
  5. Fowler, Anthony, ‘Electoral and Policy Consequences of Voter Turnout: Evidence from Compulsory Voting in Australia’, Quarterly Journal of Political Science 8, no. 2 (2013): 159–82
  6. Fukuyama, Francis, The End of History and the Last Man, Simon & Schuster, 2006
  7. ——, Identity: Contemporary Identity Politics and the Struggle for Recognition, Profile, 2018
  8. Gilson, Ronald J., ‘The Legal Infrastructure of High-technology Industrial Districts: Silicon Valley, Route 128, and Covenants Not to Compete’, New York University Law Review 74 (1999): 575
  9. Glaeser, Edward, Triumph of the City: How Our Greatest Invention Makes Us Richer, Smarter, Greener, Healthier, and Happier, Penguin, 2012
  10. Huang, Cary, ‘Tocqueville's Advice on French Revolution Captures Chinese Leaders’ Attention’, South China Morning Post, 22 January 2013
  11. ‘International Migrant Stock’, United Nations, Department of Economic and Social Affairs, Population Division, 2019, www.unmigration.org
  12. Jacques, Martin, When China Rules the World: The End of the Western World and the Birth of a New Global Order, Penguin, 2009
  13. Kline, Patrick, and Enrico Moretti, ‘People, Places, and Public Policy: Some Simple Welfare Economics of Local Economic Development Programs’, Annual Review of Economics 6, no. 1 (2014): 629–62
  14. Li, Hongbin, and Li-An Zhou, ‘Political Turnover and Economic Performance: The Incentive Role of Personnel Control in China’, Journal of Public Economics 89, nos 9–10 (2005): 1743–62
  15. Liker, Jeffrey K., Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer, McGraw-Hill Education, 2021
  16. McGregor, Richard, The Party: The Secret World of China's Communist Rulers, Penguin, 2010
  17. Mackerras, Malcolm, and Ian McAllister, ‘Compulsory Voting, Party Stability and Electoral Advantage in Australia’, Electoral Studies 18, no. 2 (1999): 217–33
  18. Martine, George, and Population Fund, Unleashing the Potential of Urban Growth, United Nations Population Fund report, UNFPA, 2007
  19. Muthukrishna, Michael, and Joseph Henrich, ‘Innovation in the Collective Brain’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 371, no. 1690 (2016): 20150192
  20. Nakamoto, Satoshi, ‘Bitcoin: A Peer-to-Peer Electronic Cash System’, Whitepaper, 2008
  21. New State Ice Co. v. Liebmann, 285 U.S. 262, 52 S. Ct. 371, 76 L. Ed. 747 (1932)
  22. O’Mara, Margaret, The Code: Silicon Valley and the Remaking of America, Penguin, 2020
  23. Reynolds, Andrew, Ben Reilly, and Andrew Ellis, Electoral System Design: The New International IDEA Handbook, International Institute for Democracy and Electoral Assistance, 2008
  24. Sassen, Saskia, Cities in a World Economy, Sage, 2018
  25. Saxenian, AnnaLee, Regional Advantage: Culture and Competition in Silicon Valley and Route 128, Harvard University Press, 1994
  26. Scheidel, Walter, Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity, Princeton University Press, 2019
  27. Schimmelpfennig, Robin, Layla Razek, Eric Schnell et al., ‘Paradox of Diversity in the Collective Brain’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B 377, no. 1843 (2022): 20200316
  28. Shum, Desmond, Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption and Vengeance in Today's China, Simon & Schuster, 2021
  29. Special Economic Zones: Progress, Emerging Challenges, and Future Directions, World Bank Publications, 2011
  30. Tauberer, Joshua, ‘How I Changed the Law with a GitHub Pull Request’, Arstechnica, 25 November 2018
  31. Tsang, Steve, A Modern History of Hong Kong: 1841–1997, Bloomsbury Academic, 2004
  32. Twain, Mark, Following the Equator: A Journey around the World, Dover, 1897
  33. Vogel, Ezra F., Deng Xiaoping and the Transformation of China, Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011
  34. Wang, Jin, ‘The Economic Impact of Special Economic Zones: Evidence from Chinese Municipalities’, Journal of Development Economics 101 (2013): 133–47
  35. Wang, Shaoda, and David Y. Yang, Policy Experimentation in China: The Political Economy of Policy Learning, working paper no. 29402, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2021
  36. Wang, Shuai, Wenwen Ding, Juanjuan Li et al., ‘Decentralized Autonomous Organizations: Concept, Model, and Applications’, IEEE Transactions on Computational Social Systems 6, no. 5 (2019): 870–8

Chapter 9: Shattering the Glass Ceiling

On inequality see the following: Joseph E. Stiglitz, The Price of Inequality: How Today's Divided Society Endangers Our Future, W. W. Norton, 2012; Angus Deaton, The Great Escape, Princeton University Press, 2013; Richard Baldwin, The Great Convergence, Harvard University Press, 2018; and Walter Scheidel, The Great Leveler, Princeton University Press, 2017.

Case studies of affirmative action around the world may be found in Thomas Sowell, Affirmative Action around the World: An Empirical Study, Yale University Press, 2004.

The history of money is presented by Niall Ferguson in The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World, Penguin, 2008; and by Jeffrey E. Garten in Three Days at Camp David: How a Secret Meeting in 1971 Transformed the Global Economy, Amberley, 2021.

For the history of key economic ideas see Lawrence H. White, The Clash of Economic Ideas: The Great Policy Debates and Experiments of the Last Hundred Years, Cambridge University Press, 2012; and two books by Ben Bernanke, 21st Century Monetary Policy: The Federal Reserve from the Great Inflation to COVID-19 and The Courage to Act: A Memoir of a Crisis and Its Aftermath, both W. W. Norton, 2022 and 2015 respectively.

For land value taxes see Lars A. Doucet, Land Is a Big Deal, Shack Simple Press, 2022; Josh Ryan-Collins, Toby Lloyd, and Laurie Macfarlane, Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing, Bloomsbury, 2017; and Henry George's 1879 work Progress and Poverty (available free of charge online). On the challenges of tax more generally (all deeper dives) see Chuck Collins, The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions, John Wiley, 2021; and Kenneth Scheve and David Stasavage, Taxing the Rich, Princeton University Press, 2016.

How wealth, politics, and corruption interact in wealthier countries such as the United States and Australia see Jane Mayer, Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right, Anchor, 2017; Nancy MacLean, Democracy in Chains: The Deep History of the Radical Right's Stealth Plan for America, Penguin, 2018; and Cameron K. Murray and Paul Frijters, Rigged: How Networks of Powerful Mates Rip Off Everyday Australians, Allen & Unwin, 2022.

Two insightful documentary films directed by Jamie Johnson (heir to the Johnson & Johnson fortune) offer a rare glimpse into wealth through interviews with young heirs (including a young Ivanka Trump, twenty-two years old at the time): Born Rich, Shout! Factory, 2003, and The One Percent, Wise and Good Films, 2008.

Specific and specialist reading

  1. Arnott, Richard J., and Joseph E. Stiglitz, ‘Aggregate Land Rents, Expenditure on Public Goods, and Optimal City Size’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 93, no. 4 (1979): 471–500
  2. Bell, Alex, Raj Chetty, Xavier Jaravel et al., ‘Who Becomes an Inventor in America? The Importance of Exposure to Innovation’, Quarterly Journal of Economics 134, no. 2 (2019): 647–713
  3. Bernanke, Ben S., Mark Gertler, Mark Watson et al., ‘Systematic Monetary Policy and the Effects of Oil Price Shocks’, Brookings Papers on Economic Activity no. 1 (1997): 91–157
  4. Buchholz, Katharina, ‘The Top 10 Percent Own 70 Percent of U.S. Wealth’, Statista, 31 August 2021, https://www.statista.com/chart/19635/wealth-distribution-percentiles-in-the-us
  5. Campbell, Cameron, and James Z. Lee, ‘Kinship and the Long-term Persistence of Inequality in Liaoning, China, 1749–2005’, Chinese Sociological Review 44, no. 1 (2011): 71–103
  6. Cannadine, David, The Decline and Fall of the British Aristocracy, Knopf Doubleday, 1999
  7. Clark, Gregory, The Son Also Rises, Princeton University Press, 2014
  8. Clark, Gregory, and Neil Cummins, ‘Intergenerational Wealth Mobility in England, 1858–2012: Surnames and Social Mobility’, Economic Journal 125, no. 582 (2015): 61–85
  9. Clark, Gregory, Neil Cummins, Yu Hao et al., ‘Surnames: A New Source for the History of Social Mobility’, Explorations in Economic History 55 (2015): 3–24
  10. Cleveland, Cutler J., Robert Costanza, Charles A. S. Hall et al., ‘Energy and the US Economy: A Biophysical Perspective’, Science 225, no. 4665 (1984): 890–7
  11. Evans, Judith, and Richard Milne, ‘Duke of Westminster Dies’, Financial Times, 10 August 2016
  12. Ferris, Nick, ‘Weekly Data: China's Nuclear Pipeline as Big as the Rest of the World's Combined’, Energy Monitor, 20 December 2021, https://www.energymonitor.ai/sectors/power/weekly-data-chinas-nuclear-pipeline-as-big-as-the-rest-of-the-worlds-combined/
  13. Gould, Stephen Jay, The Panda's Thumb: More Reflections in Natural History, W. W. Norton, 1992
  14. Haan, Marco A., Pim Heijnen, Lambert Schoonbeek et al., ‘Sound Taxation? On the Use of Self-declared Value’, European Economic Review 56, no. 2 (2012): 205–15
  15. Hall, Charles A. S., and Kent Klitgaard, Energy and the Wealth of Nations: An Introduction to Biophysical Economics, Springer International, 2018
  16. Hall, Charles A. S., Jessica G. Lambert, and Stephen B. Balogh, ‘EROI of Different Fuels and the Implications for Society’, Energy Policy 64 (2014): 141–52
  17. Hao, Yu, ‘Social Mobility in China, 1645–2012: A Surname Study’, China Economic Quarterly International 1, no. 3 (2021): 233–43
  18. Jiménez-Rodríguez, Rebeca, and Marcelo Sánchez, ‘Oil Price Shocks and Real GDP Growth: Empirical Evidence for Some OECD Countries’, Applied Economics 37, no. 2 (2005): 201–28
  19. Joulfaian, David, The Federal Estate Tax: History, Law, and Economics, MIT Press, 2019
  20. King, Mervyn A., The End of Alchemy: Money, Banking, and the Future of the Global Economy, W. W. Norton, 2017
  21. Lindert, P. H., and J. G. Williamson, Unequal Gains: American Growth and Inequality since 1700, Princeton University Press, 2016
  22. Meltzer, Allan H., A History of the Federal Reserve, vols 1 and 2, University of Chicago Press, 2010
  23. Michels, Robert, Political Parties: A Sociological Study of the Oligarchical Tendencies of Modern Democracy, Hearst's International Library Company, 1915
  24. Mill, John Stuart, Principles of Political Economy, D. Appleton, 1884
  25. Mirrlees, James, ed., Tax by Design: The Mirrlees Review, Oxford University Press, 2011
  26. Murphy, David J., and Charles A. S. Hall, ‘Energy Return on Investment, Peak Oil, and the End of Economic Growth’, Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1219, no. 1 (2011): 52–72
  27. Park, Jungwook, and Ronald A. Ratti, ‘Oil Price Shocks and Stock Markets in the US and 13 European Countries’, Energy Economics 30, no. 5 (2008): 2587–608
  28. Piketty, Thomas, Capital in the Twenty-first Century, Harvard University Press, 2014
  29. Pilon, Mary, The Monopolists: Obsession, Fury, and the Scandal Behind the World's Favorite Board Game, Bloomsbury, 2015
  30. Rawls, John, A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, 1971
  31. Ryan-Collins, Josh, Tony Greenham, Richard Werner et al., Where Does Money Come From? A Guide to the UK Monetary and Banking System, New Economics Foundation, 2012
  32. Shrubsole, Guy, Who Owns England? How We Lost Our Green and Pleasant Land, and How to Take It Back, HarperCollins, 2019
  33. Steil, Benn, The Battle of Bretton Woods, Princeton University Press, 2013
  34. Young, H. Peyton, Equity: In Theory and Practice, Princeton University Press, 1995

Chapter 10: Triggering a Creative Explosion

The history of the shipping container has been documented by Marc Levinson: see The Box, Princeton University Press, 2016.

On economic growth and productivity declines see Tyler Cowen, The Great Stagnation: How America Ate All the Low-hanging Fruit of Modern History, Got Sick, and Will (Eventually) Feel Better, Penguin, 2011. On social mobility there is Gregory Clark's The Son Also Rises, Princeton University Press, 2014.

The way in which the Industrial Revolution was disruptive and how AI and other technologies will be too is described in two books: Carl Benedikt Frey's The Technology Trap, Princeton University Press, 2019; and Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee's The Second Machine Age: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies, W. W. Norton, 2014.

For some examples of Silicon Valley's unique culture, see Andrew McAfee's The Geek Way: The Radical Mindset that Drives Extraordinary Results, Little, Brown, 2023.

Case studies of how the process of science is really conducted by scientists are Harry M. Collins and Trevor Pinch, The Golem: What You Should Know about Science, Cambridge University Press, 1998; and Stuart Firestein, Failure: Why Science Is So Successful, Oxford University Press, 2015.

Some books on the importance of diversity are Caroline Criado Perez, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Abrams, 2019; Matthew Syed, Rebel Ideas: The Power of Diverse Thinking, John Murray, 2019; and Scott Page, The Diversity Bonus, Princeton University Press, 2017.

For examples of structured diversity, innovation, and changes to collective brains see Walter Scheidel, Escape from Rome: The Failure of Empire and the Road to Prosperity, Princeton University Press, 2019; Gen. Stanley McChrystal, Tantum Collins, David Silverman et al., Team of Teams: New Rules of Engagement for a Complex World, Penguin, 2015; and Satya Nadella, Greg Shaw, Jill Tracie Nichols et al., Hit Refresh: The Quest to Rediscover Microsoft's Soul and Imagine a Better Future for Everyone, Harper Business, 2017.

Specific and specialist reading

  1. AlShebli, Bedoor, Kinga Makovi, and Talal Rahwan, Retracted articles: ‘The Association between Early Career Informal Mentorship in Academic Collaborations and Junior Author Performance’, Nature Communications 11, no. 1 (2020): 1–8
  2. AlShebli, Bedoor K., Talal Rahwan, and Wei Lee Woon, ‘The Preeminence of Ethnic Diversity in Scientific Collaboration’, Nature Communications 9, no. 1 (2018): 5163
  3. Berkes, Enrico, and Peter Nencka, ‘Knowledge Access: The Effects of Carnegie Libraries on Innovation’, 22 December 2021, Social Science Research Network, ssrn.3629299
  4. Bertrand, Marianne, and Esther Duflo, ‘Field Experiments on Discrimination’, Handbook of Economic Field Experiments 1 (2017): 309–93
  5. Chen, Yixing, Vikas Mittal, and Shrihari Sridhar, ‘Investigating the Academic Performance and Disciplinary Consequences of School District Internet Access Spending’, Journal of Marketing Research 58, no. 1 (2021): 141–62
  6. Dawkins, Richard, The Selfish Gene, Oxford University Press, 1976
  7. Draghi, Jeremy, and Günter P. Wagner, ‘Evolution of Evolvability in a Developmental Model’, Evolution 62, no. 2 (2008): 301–15
  8. Duhigg, Charles, ‘What Google Learned from Its Quest to Build the Perfect Team’, New York Times Magazine, 25 February 2016
  9. Elman, Benjamin A., Civil Examinations and Meritocracy in Late Imperial China, Harvard University Press, 2013
  10. Forscher, Patrick S., Calvin K. Lai, Jordan R. Axt et al., ‘A Meta-analysis of Procedures to Change Implicit Measures’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 117, no. 3 (2019): 522
  11. Gopnik, Alison, ‘Childhood as a Solution to Explore–Exploit Tensions’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 375, no. 1803 (20 July 2020): 20190502
  12. Healy, Thomas, The Great Dissent: How Oliver Wendell Holmes Changed His Mind – and Changed the History of Free Speech in America, Metropolitan Books, 2013
  13. Hirschman, Daniel, ‘Controlling for What? Movements, Measures, and Meanings in the US Gender Wage Gap Debate’, History of Political Economy 54, no. S1 (2022): 221–57
  14. Jackson, Joshua Conrad, Michele Gelfand, Soham De et al., ‘The Loosening of American Culture over 200 Years Is Associated with a Creativity–Order Trade-Off’, Nature Human Behaviour 3, no. 3 (2019): 244–50
  15. Kleven, Henrik, Camille Landais, and Jakob Egholt Søgaard, ‘Children and Gender Inequality: Evidence from Denmark’, American Economic Journal: Applied Economics 11, no. 4 (2019): 181–209
  16. Kleven, Henrik, Camille Landais, Johanna Posch et al., ‘Child Penalties across Countries: Evidence and Explanations’, AEA Papers and Proceedings 109 (2019): 122–6
  17. Lane, Melissa, Henry Lee, and Henry Desmond Pritchard, The Republic, Penguin, 2007
  18. McLean, Bethany, and Peter Elkind, The Smartest Guys in the Room: The Amazing Rise and Scandalous Fall of Enron, Penguin, 2013
  19. Mill, John Stuart, On Liberty, J. W. Parker & Son, 1859
  20. Moser, Petra, ‘Patents and Innovation: Evidence from Economic History’, Journal of Economic Perspectives 27, no. 1 (2013): 23–44
  21. Muthukrishna, Michael, and Joseph Henrich, ‘Innovation in the Collective Brain’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 371, no. 1690 (2016): 20150192
  22. Nix, Emily, and Martin Eckhoff Andresen, What Causes the Child Penalty? Evidence from Same Sex Couples and Policy Reforms, discussion paper no. 902, Statistics Norway, Research Department, 2019
  23. Paluck, Elizabeth Levy, and Donald P. Green, ‘Prejudice Reduction: What Works? A Review and Assessment of Research and Practice’, Annual Review of Psychology 60 (2009): 339–67
  24. Paluck, Elizabeth Levy, Roni Porat, Chelsey S. Clark et al., ‘Prejudice Reduction: Progress and Challenges’, Annual Review of Psychology 72 (2021): 533–60
  25. Payne, Joshua L., and Andreas Wagner, ‘The Causes of Evolvability and Their Evolution’, Nature Reviews Genetics 20, no. 1 (January 2019): 24–38
  26. Pigliucci, Massimo, ‘Is Evolvability Evolvable?’ Nature Reviews Genetics 9, no. 1 (2008): 75–82
  27. Pronin, Emily, Daniel Y. Lin, and Lee Ross, ‘The Bias Blind Spot: Perceptions of Bias in Self versus Others’, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 28, no. 3 (2002): 369–81
  28. Qian, Yi, ‘Do National Patent Laws Stimulate Domestic Innovation in a Global Patenting Environment? A Cross-country Analysis of Pharmaceutical Patent Protection, 1978–2002’, Review of Economics and Statistics 89, no. 3 (2007): 436–53
  29. Scopelliti, Irene, Carey K. Morewedge, Erin McCormick et al., ‘Bias Blind Spot: Structure, Measurement, and Consequences’, Management Science 61, no. 10 (2015): 2468–86
  30. Sobel, Robert, Car Wars: The Untold Story, Dutton, 1984
  31. Weatherford, Jack, Genghis Khan and the Making of the Modern World, Crown, 2005
  32. Williams, Heidi L., ‘Intellectual Property Rights and Innovation: Evidence from the Human Genome’, Journal of Political Economy 121, no. 1 (2013): 1–27

Chapter 11: Improving the Internet

A history of human rights is Lynn Hunt, Inventing Human Rights: A History, W. W. Norton, 2007.

On training to spot misinformation see Carl T. Bergstrom and Jevin D. West, Calling Bullshit: The Art of Skepticism in a Data-driven World, Random House, 2021; Stuart Ritchie, Science Fictions: Exposing Fraud, Bias, Negligence and Hype in Science, Random House, 2020; and Nassim Nicholas Taleb, Incerto 5-Book Bundle: Fooled by Randomness, The Black Swan, The Bed of Procrustes, Antifragile, Skin in the Game, Random House, 2021.

On the use of game theory to perform incentive audits see E. Yoeli and M. Hoffman, Hidden Games: The Surprising Power of Game Theory to Explain Irrational Human Behavior, Basic Books, 2022.

Specific and specialist reading

  1. Allcott, Hunt, Luca Braghieri, Sarah Eichmeyer et al., ‘The Welfare Effects of Social Media’, American Economic Review 110, no. 3 (2020): 629–76
  2. Banerjee, Abhijit, Arun G. Chandrasekhar, Esther Duflo et al., ‘The Diffusion of Microfinance’, Science 341, no. 6144 (2013): 1236498
  3. ——, ‘Using Gossips to Spread Information: Theory and Evidence from Two Randomized Controlled Trials’, Review of Economic Studies 86, no. 6 (2019): 2453–90
  4. Brashier, Nadia M., and Daniel L. Schacter, ‘Aging in an Era of Fake News’, Current Directions in Psychological Science 29, no. 3 (2020): 316–23
  5. Brynjolfsson, Erik, Xiang Hui, and Meng Liu, ‘Does Machine Translation Affect International Trade? Evidence from a Large Digital Platform’, Management Science 65, no. 12 (2019): 5449–60
  6. Carron-Arthur, Bradley, John A. Cunningham, and Kathleen M. Griffiths, ‘Describing the Distribution of Engagement in an Internet Support Group by Post Frequency: A Comparison of the 90-9-1 Principle and Zipf's Law’, Internet Interventions 1, no. 4 (2014): 165–8
  7. Cheng, Joey T., Jessica L. Tracy, Tom Foulsham et al., ‘Two Ways to the Top: Evidence That Dominance and Prestige Are Distinct Yet Viable Avenues to Social Rank and Influence’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 104, no. 1 (2013): 103
  8. Chudek, Maciej, Michael Muthukrishna, and Joe Henrich, ‘Cultural Evolution’, in The Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, pp. 1–21, Wiley, 2015
  9. Gergely, György, Harold Bekkering, and Ildikó Király, ‘Rational Imitation in Preverbal Infants’, Nature 415, no. 6873 (2002): 755
  10. Henrich, Joseph, The Secret of Our Success, Princeton University Press, 2015
  11. Henrich, Joseph, Maciej Chudek, and Robert Boyd, ‘The Big Man Mechanism: How Prestige Fosters Cooperation and Creates Prosocial Leaders’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 370, no. 1683 (2015): 2015001
  12. Henrich, Joseph, and Francisco J. Gil-White, ‘The Evolution of Prestige: Freely Conferred Deference as a Mechanism for Enhancing the Benefits of Cultural Transmission’, Evolution and Human Behavior 22, no. 3 (2001): 165–96
  13. Hilmert, Clayton J., James A. Kulik, and Nicholas J. S. Christenfeld, ‘Positive and Negative Opinion Modeling: The Influence of Another's Similarity and Dissimilarity’, Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 90, no. 3 (2006): 440
  14. Hoffman, Moshe, and Erez Yoeli, Hidden Games: The Surprising Power of Game Theory to Explain Irrational Human Behaviour, Basic Books UK, 2022
  15. Johnson, Jamie (dir.), Born Rich, Shout! Factory, 2003
  16. Norenzayan, Ara, Azim F. Shariff, Will M. Gervais et al., ‘The Cultural Evolution of Prosocial Religions’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 39 (2016): e1
  17. Van Mierlo, Trevor, ‘The 1% Rule in Four Digital Health Social Networks: An Observational Study’, Journal of Medical Internet Research 16, no. 2 (2014): e2966

Chapter 12: Becoming Brighter

For the history of Estonia's Tiger Leap program see Tiger Leap: 1997–2007, Tiger Leap Foundation, 2007. On some of the educational differences and outcomes around the world see Amanda Ripley, The Smartest Kids in the World: And How They Got That Way, Simon & Schuster, 2013.

Conrad Wolfram's manifesto on math education is The Math(s) Fix: An Education Blueprint for the AI Age, Wolfram Media, Incorporated, 2020.

On inequalities, prejudice, and bias see Linda Scott, The Double X Economy: The Epic Potential of Empowering Women, Faber & Faber, 2020; Caroline Criado Perez, Invisible Women: Data Bias in a World Designed for Men, Abrams, 2019; and Jennifer L. Eberhardt, Biased: Uncovering the Hidden Prejudice That Shapes What We See, Think, and Do, Penguin, 2020.

Specific and specialist reading

  1. Algan, Yann, Christian Dustmann, Albrecht Glitz et al., ‘The Economic Situation of First and Second‐Generation Immigrants in France, Germany and the United Kingdom’, Economic Journal (2010): F4–30
  2. Arcidiacono, Peter, and Michael Lovenheim, ‘Affirmative Action and the Quality–Fit Trade-off’, Journal of Economic Literature 54, no. 1 (2016): 3–51
  3. Arcidiacono, Peter, Esteban M. Aucejo, and V. Joseph Hotz, ‘University Differences in the Graduation of Minorities in STEM Fields: Evidence from California’, American Economic Review 106, no. 3 (2016): 525–62
  4. Arcidiacono, Peter, Esteban M. Aucejo, and Ken Spenner, ‘What Happens after Enrollment? An Analysis of the Time Path of Racial Differences in GPA and Major Choice’, Journal of Labor Economics 1 (2012): 1–24
  5. Beraja, Martin, Andrew Kao, David Y. Yang et al., ‘Exporting the Surveillance State via Trade in AI’, Brookings Institute Report, 2023
  6. Bergman, Peter, Raj Chetty, Stefanie DeLuca et al., Creating Moves to Opportunity: Experimental Evidence on Barriers to Neighborhood Choice, working paper no. 26164, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2019
  7. Bertrand, Marianne, and Sendhil Mullainathan, ‘Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on labor Market Discrimination’, American Economic Review 94, no. 4 (2004): 991–1013
  8. Chetty, Raj, ‘Improving Equality of Opportunity: New Insights from Big Data’, Contemporary Economic Policy 39, no. 1 (2021): 7–41
  9. Chetty, Raj, John N. Friedman, Nathaniel Hendren et al., The Opportunity Atlas: Mapping the Childhood Roots of Social Mobility, working paper no. 25147, National Bureau of Economic Research, 2018
  10. Chetty, Raj, David Grusky, Maximilian Hell et al., ‘The Fading American Dream: Trends in Absolute Income Mobility since 1940’, Science 356, no. 6336 (2017): 398–406
  11. Chetty, Raj, Matthew O. Jackson, Theresa Kuchler et al., ‘Social Capital I: Measurement and Associations with Economic Mobility’, Nature 608, no. 7921 (2022): 108–21
  12. ——, ‘Social Capital II: Determinants of Economic Connectedness’, Nature 608, no. 7921 (2022): 122–34
  13. Christian, Brian, and Tom Griffiths, Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions, Macmillan, 2016
  14. Durlauf, Steven N., Andros Kourtellos, and Chih Ming Tan, ‘The Great Gatsby Curve’, Annual Review of Economics 14 (2022): 571–605
  15. Dustmann, Christian, and Tommaso Frattini, ‘The Fiscal Effects of Immigration to the UK’, Economic Journal 124, no. 580 (2014): F593–643
  16. Flynn, James R., What Is Intelligence? Beyond the Flynn Effect, Cambridge University Press, 2007
  17. Green, John, ‘Samurai, Daimyo, Matthew Perry, and Nationalism: Crash Course World History #34’, CrashCourse, YouTube, 14 September 2012, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Nosq94oCl_M
  18. Hinton, Geoffrey E., and Ruslan R. Salakhutdinov, ‘Reducing the Dimensionality of Data with Neural Networks’, Science 313, no. 5786 (2006): 504–7
  19. Hulance, Jo, Mark Kowalksi, and Robert Fairhurst, Long-term Strategies to Reduce Lead Exposure from Drinking Water, report no. 14372.2, UK Government Drinking Water Inspectorate, 2021
  20. Jobs Are Changing, So Should Education, Royal Society, 2019
  21. Johnson, George, ‘To Test a Powerful Computer, Play an Ancient Game’, New York Times, 29 July 1997
  22. Kline, Michelle Ann, ‘How to Learn about Teaching: An Evolutionary Framework for the Study of Teaching Behavior in Humans and Other Animals’, Behavioral and Brain Sciences 38 (2015): e31
  23. LeCun, Yann, Yoshua Bengio, and Geoffrey Hinton, ‘Deep Learning’, Nature 521, no. 7553 (2015): 436–44
  24. Lu, Jackson G., Richard E. Nisbett, and Michael W. Morris, ‘Why East Asians but Not South Asians Are Underrepresented in Leadership Positions in the United States’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 117, no. 9 (2020): 4590–600
  25. McFarland, Michael J., Matt E. Hauer, and Aaron Reuben, ‘Half of US Population Exposed to Adverse Lead Levels in Early Childhood’, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences 119, no. 11 (2022): e2118631119
  26. Metz, Cade, Genius Makers: The Mavericks Who Brought AI to Google, Facebook, and the World, Penguin, 2022
  27. Muthukrishna, Michael, and Joseph Henrich, ‘Innovation in the Collective Brain’, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 371, no. 1690 (2016): 20150192
  28. Muthukrishna, Michael, Michael Doebeli, Maciej Chudek et al., ‘The Cultural Brain Hypothesis: How Culture Drives Brain Expansion, Sociality, and Life History’, PLoS Computational Biology 14, no. 11 (2018): e1006504
  29. Nisbett, Richard E., Mindware: Tools for Smart Thinking, Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 2015
  30. Oreopoulos, Philip, ‘Why Do Skilled Immigrants Struggle in the Labor Market? A Field Experiment with Thirteen Thousand Resumes’, American Economic Journal: Economic Policy 3, no. 4 (2011): 148–71
  31. Pietschnig, J., and M. Voracek, ‘One Century of Global IQ Gains: A Formal Meta-analysis of the Flynn Effect (1909–2013)’, Perspectives on Psychological Science 10, no. 3 (2015): 282–306
  32. Reeves, Richard V., and Dimitrios Halikias, Race Gaps in SAT Scores Highlight Inequality and Hinder Upward Mobility, Brookings Institute, 2017
  33. Trahan, Lisa, Karla K. Stuebing, Merril K Hiscock et al., ‘The Flynn Effect: A Meta-analysis’, Psychological Bulletin 140, no. 5 (2014): 1332–60
  34. Vision for Science and Mathematics Education, Royal Society, 2014
  35. ‘Why Brahmins Lead Western Firms but Rarely Indian Ones’, The Economist, 1 January 2022

Conclusion

For speculation on some of the challenges that face us, see Vaclav Smil, Global Catastrophes and Trends: The Next 50 Years, MIT Press, 2008; and Toby Ord, The Precipice: Existential Risk and the Future of Humanity, Hachette, 2020.

Specific and specialist reading

  1. Carey, Brycchan, From Peace to Freedom: Quaker Rhetoric and the Birth of American Antislavery, 1657–1761, Yale University Press, 2012
  2. Gore, Al, An Inconvenient Truth: The Planetary Emergency of Global Warming and What We Can Do About It, Rodale, 2006
  3. Hall, Charles A. S., and Kent Klitgaard, Energy and the Wealth of Nations: An Introduction to Biophysical Economics, Springer International, 2018
  4. Hall, Charles A. S., Jessica G. Lambert, and Stephen B. Balogh, ‘EROI of Different Fuels and the Implications for Society’, Energy Policy 64 (2014): 141–52
  5. Hochschild, Adam, Bury the Chains: Prophets and Rebels in the Fight to Free an Empire's Slaves, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2006
  6. Pankhurst, E. Sylvia, The Suffragette – The History of The Women's Militant Suffrage Movement – 1905–1910, Read Books, 2009
  7. Renwick, Chris, Bread for All: The Origins of the Welfare State, Penguin, 2017
  8. Williams, Juan, Eyes on the Prize: Civil Rights Reader, Penguin, 1991