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This book has 5 recommendations

Adam Grant (Author)

It’s rare for a physician to become a prominent social scientist. It’s even rarer for that person to write a book that opens your eyes to a fresh way of understanding the world. Blueprint is a contrarian exploration of how good societies may be shaped less by historical forces and more by natural selection.

Eric Schmidt (Ex-CEO/Google)

Tribalism is all around us, but it does not have to be. After all, we are all human. In lively and engaging prose, Christakis shows what is possible, and what we must do.

Marc Andreessen (Co-Founder/Andreessen Horowitz)

Christakis takes us on a spellbinding tour of how evolution brings people together, setting the stage for our modern world where online networks connect people in new and unprecedented ways. Our genes don't work in isolation; rather they equip our species with the capacity to join together and make great things. This powerful and fascinating book shows the fundamental good that lies within us, that connects us, and that helps us cooperate beyond the survival of the fittest.

Steven Pinker (Author)

Nicholas Christakis is a pioneer in bridging the conceptual chasm between the choices of individual people and the shaping of an entire society. In this timely and fascinating book, he shows how the better angels of our nature, rooted in our evolutionary past, can bring forth an enlightened and compassionate civilization.

Angela Duckworth (Author)

A remarkable achievement! Christakis explains, in the most lucid and accessible way imaginable, how our genetic and cultural heritages are deeply intertwined. The story of human nature is no fairy tale, but it nevertheless reveals our potential, and our proclivity, for good.

Amazon description

Drawing on advances in social science, evolutionary biology, genetics, neuroscience, and network science, Blueprint shows how and why evolution has placed us on a humane path -- and how we are united by our common humanity.

For too long, scientists have focused on the dark side of our biological heritage: our capacity for aggression, cruelty, prejudice, and self-interest. But natural selection has given us a suite of beneficial social features, including our capacity for love, friendship, cooperation, and learning. Beneath all our inventions -- our tools, farms, machines, cities, nations -- we carry with us innate proclivities to make a good society.

In Blueprint, Nicholas A. Christakis introduces the compelling idea that our genes affect not only our bodies and behaviors, but also the ways in which we make societies, ones that are surprisingly similar worldwide. With many vivid examples -- including diverse historical and contemporary cultures, communities formed in the wake of shipwrecks, commune dwellers seeking utopia, online groups thrown together by design or involving artificially intelligent bots, and even the tender and complex social arrangements of elephants and dolphins that so resemble our own -- Christakis shows that, despite a human history replete with violence, we cannot escape our social blueprint for goodness.

In a world of increasing political and economic polarization, it's tempting to ignore the positive role of our evolutionary past. But by exploring the ancient roots of goodness in civilization, Blueprint shows that our genes have shaped societies for our welfare and that, in a feedback loop stretching back many thousands of years, societies have shaped, and are still shaping, our genes today.

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Adam Grant, Eric Schmidt, Marc Andreessen, Steven Pinker, Angela Duckworth

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Nicholas Christakis

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