Robert Trivers is a living legend in biology and the social sciences,
a man the Harvard psychologist Steven Pinker calls
“one of the great thinkers in the history of Western thought”
and Time magazine named one of the greatest scientists and thinkers of the 20th Century.
His theories on the evolutionary tensions between parent and offspring,
sibling and sibling, man and woman, friend and friend,
and a person and himself or herself have not only revolutionized genetics and evolutionary biology
but have influenced disciplines from medicine and the social sciences
to history, economics, and literary studies.
But unlike other renowned scientists, Trivers has spent time behind bars,
drove a getaway car for Huey P. Newton,
and founded an armed group in Jamaica to protect gay men from mob violence.
Now, in the entertaining tradition of Surely You’re Joking Mr. Feynman,
Trivers tell us in his inimitable voice about the inimitable life behind the revolutionary science.
He comments with irreverent wit and penetrating insight on everything
from American racism to the history of psychiatry to who killed Peter Tosh, musical heir to Bob Marley.
