Robert M. Sapolsky is that rara avis whos both eminent scientist and elegant prose stylist. Three decades ago, at the ripe old age of 28, he won a MacArthur genius grant before settling into a storied career as neurobiologist and primatologist at Stanford University, conducting field work among baboons in Kenya and publishing books with such whimsical titles as Why Zebras Dont Get Ulcers and The Trouble With Testosterone.

His new book is his magnum opus, but is also strikingly different from his earlier work, veering sharply toward hard science as it looms myriad strands of his ruminations on human behavior. The familiar, enchanting Sapolsky tropes are here his warm, witty voice, a sleight of hand that unfolds the mysteries of cognition but Behave keeps the bar high.

The book opens with a conceit: Consider a simple, everyday tic chewing gum, say, or bickering with a spouse and then pivot backward in time. In the instant before the action, Sapolsky charts the intricate web of neurons as they fire up, the seemingly infinite synapses that spark across the organs widespread regions. In the hours leading up to the behavior, hormones play a critical role; here Sapolsky offers a tutorial on the waves of hormones that wash over us. Wind the clock back to childhood, and there are environmental factors at work, from affluence to poverty, safe neighborhoods versus violent ones. Wind the clock back to conception, and he plumbs how our DNA, as well as epigenetic components, shape us from day to day, year to year. He dials back even further, probing the dice theory of evolution, lizard brains beneath our mammalian gray matter.

Link:
REVIEW: 'Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst,' by Robert M. Sapolsky - Minneapolis Star Tribune