Robert M. Sapolsky

Why do we do the things we do? attempts to answer that question, looking at it from every angle. He hops back in time, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy. The result is a dazzling tour of the science of human, a majestic synthesis that harvests cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines to provide a subtle and nuanced perspective on why we ultimately do the things we do-- for good and for ill.

The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Behave

Renowned primatologist Robert Sapolsky offers a completely revised and updated edition of his most popular work, with nearly 90,000 copies in print Now in a third edition, Robert M. Sapolsky's acclaimed and successful Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers features new chapters on how stress affects sleep and addiction, as well as new insights into anxiety and personality disorder and the impact of spirituality on managing stress. As Sapolsky explains, most of us do not lie awake at night worrying about whether we have leprosy or malaria. Instead, the diseases we fear-and the ones that plague us now-are illnesses brought on by the slow accumulation of damage, such as heart disease and cancer. When we worry or experience stress, our body turns on the same physiological responses that an animal's does, but we do not resolve conflict in the same way-through fighting or fleeing. Over time, this activation of a stress response makes us literally sick. Combining cutting-edge research with a healthy dose of good humor and practical advice, Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers explains how prolonged stress causes or intensifies a range of physical and mental afflictions, including depression, ulcers, colitis, heart disease, and more. It also provides essential guidance to controlling our stress responses. This new edition promises to be the most comprehensive and engaging one yet.

The Acclaimed Guide to Stress, Stress-Related Diseases, and Coping - Now Revised and Updated

Why Zebras Don't Get Ulcers

In the tradition of Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, Robert Sapolsky, a foremost science writer and recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant, tells the mesmerizing story of his twenty-one years in remote Kenya with a troop of Savannah baboons. “I had never planned to become a savanna baboon when I grew up; instead, I had always assumed I would become a mountain gorilla,” writes Robert Sapolsky in this witty and riveting chronicle of a scientist’s coming-of-age in remote Africa. An exhilarating account of Sapolsky’s twenty-one-year study of a troop of rambunctious baboons in Kenya, A Primate’s Memoir interweaves serious scientific observations with wry commentary about the challenges and pleasures of living in the wilds of the Serengeti—for man and beast alike. Over two decades, Sapolsky survives culinary atrocities, gunpoint encounters, and a surreal kidnapping, while witnessing the encroachment of the tourist mentality on the farthest vestiges of unspoiled Africa. As he conducts unprecedented physiological research on wild primates, he becomes evermore enamored of his subjects—unique and compelling characters in their own right—and he returns to them summer after summer, until tragedy finally prevents him. By turns hilarious and poignant, A Primate’s Memoir is a magnum opus from one of our foremost science writers.

A Neuroscientist's Unconventional Life Among the Baboons

A Primate's Memoir

The instant New York Times bestseller! One of our great behavioral scientists, the bestselling author of Behave, plumbs the depths of the science and philosophy of decision-making to mount a devastating case against free will, an argument with profound consequences Robert Sapolsky’s Behave, his now classic account of why humans do good and why they do bad, pointed toward an unsettling conclusion: We may not grasp the precise marriage of nature and nurture that creates the physics and chemistry at the base of human behavior, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist. Now, in Determined, Sapolsky takes his argument all the way, mounting a brilliant (and in his inimitable way, delightful) full-frontal assault on the pleasant fantasy that there is some separate self telling our biology what to do. Determined offers a marvelous synthesis of what we know about how consciousness works—the tight weave between reason and emotion and between stimulus and response in the moment and over a life. One by one, Sapolsky tackles all the major arguments for free will and takes them out, cutting a path through the thickets of chaos and complexity science and quantum physics, as well as touching ground on some of the wilder shores of philosophy. He shows us that the history of medicine is in no small part the history of learning that fewer and fewer things are somebody’s “fault”; for example, for centuries we thought seizures were a sign of demonic possession. Yet, as he acknowledges, it’s very hard, and at times impossible, to uncouple from our zeal to judge others and to judge ourselves. Sapolsky applies the new understanding of life beyond free will to some of our most essential questions around punishment, morality, and living well together. By the end, Sapolsky argues that while living our daily lives recognizing that we have no free will is going to be monumentally difficult, doing so is not going to result in anarchy, pointlessness, and existential malaise. Instead, it will make for a much more humane world.

A Science of Life without Free Will

Determined

Covering such broad topics as science, politics, history, and nature, presents essays that explore the human struggle with moral and ethical problems in today's world.

And Other Essays On The Biology Of The Human Predicament

The Trouble With Testosterone

A collection of original essays by a leading neurobiologist and primatologist shares the author's insights into behavioral biology, in a volume that focuses on three primary topics, including the physiology of genes, the human body, and the factors that shape human social interaction. By the author of A Primate's Memoir. Reprint. 25,000 first printing.

And Other Essays on Our Lives as Animals

Monkeyluv

Biology and Human Behavior

Being Human

psychofizjologia stresu

Dlaczego zebry nie mają wrzodów?

Human Behavioral Biology

jak biologia wydobywa z nas to, co najgorsze, i to, co najlepsze

Zachowuj się

Davranış

Zebralar Neden Ülser Olmaz?

Looking beyond the now widely recognized relationships between stress and physical illness, this accessible and engagingly written book suggests that stress and stress-related hormones can also endanger the brain. Strategies to reduce stress and methods to protect neurons from further damage are proposed, and the relevance for humans of the animal research findings are clearly delineated. Sapolsky provides an extensive review of the recent, exciting data on glucocorticoids, the adrenal steroid hormones (hydrocortisone or cortisol in humans) that are released during stress. Excessive exposure to these hormones can damage the brain and make neurons more vulnerable to neurological insults. The findings he reports and ideas he synthesizes may have profound implications for understanding brain aging and resistance of the brain to the damaging effects of strokes, seizures, and possibly Alzheimer's disease. In part I Sapolsky focuses on how the failure of glucocorticoid regulation and subsequent excessive secretion combine to cause a complex cascade of degeneration in the brain during aging. In part 11 he addresses the implications of glucocorticoid neurotoxicity for neurology. Each chapter includes a helpful summary of the major points discussed as well as a capsule review of information from the previous chapters. Robert M. Sapolsky is Associate Professor of Biology and Neuroscience at Stanford University. He is also Research Associate at the Institute for Primate Research, National Museums of Kenya, Nairobi, and a MacArthur Fellow.

Stress, the Aging Brain, and the Mechanisms of Neuron Death

One of the world's greatest scientists of human behaviour, the bestselling author of Behave, shows that free will does not exist - and challenges us to rethink the notions of choice, identity, responsibility, justice, morality and how we live together. 'One of the best scientist-writers of our time' OLIVER SACKS 'A bravura performance, well worth reading for the pleasure of Sapolsky's deeply informed company' OLIVER BURKEMAN, Observer Behind every thought, action and experience there lies a chain of biological and environmental causes, stretching back from the moment a neuron fires to the dawn of our species and beyond. Nowhere in this infinite sequence is there a place where free will could play a role. Without free will, it makes no more sense to punish people for antisocial behaviour than it does to scold a car for breaking down. It is no one's fault they are poor or overweight or unsuccessful, nor do people deserve praise for their talent or hard work; 'grit' is a myth. This mechanistic view of human behaviour challenges our most powerful instincts, but history suggests that we have already made great strides toward it: where once we saw demonic possession or cowardice, for example, now we diagnose illness or trauma and offer help. Determined confronts us with our true nature: who and what we are is biology and nothing more. Disturbing and liberating in equal measure, it explores the far-reaching implications for society of accepting this reality. Monumentally difficult as it may be, the reward will be a far more just and humane world. 'Wonderfully readable ... humorous and warm and humane' Justin Webb, Today (BBC Radio 4)

A Science of Life Without Free Will

Perché alle zebre non viene l'ulcera? La più istruttiva e divertente guida allo stress e alle malattie che produce. Con tutte le soluzioni per vincerlo

Gracias a los avances en la medicina y en la sanidad pública, nuestros patrones de enfermedad han cambiado. Actualmente padecemos enfermedades distintas y tenemos más probabilidades de morir de forma diferente que la mayor parte de nuestros antepasados. Lo que nos preocupa y nos quita el sueño es otro tipo de enfermedades. Y una de ellas es el estrés: atascos de tráfi co, problemas económicos, exceso de trabajo, relaciones sociales... Y el estrés sí puede generar enfermedades. En nuestra vida privilegiada, hemos sido los únicos (del mundo animal) con la suficiente inteligencia como para inventarnos esos agentes estresantes, y los únicos lo bastante estúpidos como para permitir que dominen nuestras vidas. Ante el gran muro de un agente estresante no hay que suponer que existe una solución especial que logrará derribar el muro, lo que hay que asumir es que a menudo, mediante el control de una serie de puntos de apoyo podemos escalarlo. Este libro es una útil guía para ello. Esta nueva edición totalmente actualizada incluye nuevos capítulos y nuevas perspectivas sobre cómo responde el sistema nervioso al estrés y cómo se pueden controlar estas respuestas.

Robert M. Sapolsky

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