Rating: 
Summary: Worth reading for anyone dealing with the human race
Review: No, it isn't light reading. And I can't say I understand every word of it. But it's the book I've found myself quoting from more often than any other book in the last five years as I've attempted to share my insight and experiences with my colleagues. I'm not a psychologist or social worker: but I deal with people who are addressing (or not) life's greatest issues (money, death, children, philanthropy). Read it a chapter at a time, and you will be rewarded with a greater understanding of the human race-and yourself.
Rating: 
Summary: A very important book...
Review: Noticing that such few people wrote a review, I felt impelled to write one to the best of my ability. While I have several philosophical differences and while the field has changed since the initial publication, the book still remains in my mind as one of the most important books to date. In a nutshell, it presents for the first time, a new Social Science paradigm, one they call: Evolutionary Psychology. Whether one disagrees or not, their critique and attacks of the standard social science model which has dominated our thinking for years now is both convincing and inspiring. While disappointed by their largely nativist or innatist stance on almost everything, I remain confident that evolutionary psychology is sure to change many fields like psychology, linguistics, and I hope, anthropology. I highly recommend that you read this book but be sure to do so with great caution, keeping in mind that "what is simple is not always true and the truth is no simple maatter"...
Rating:
Summary: A fresh start
Review: The argument - and it is an argument - is that human behaviour is strongly influenced by evolved psychological mechanisms, and that those mechanisms are numerous and specific, rather than just one general learning mechanism - ie a human baby comes with an installed operating system and quite a lot of free software, and is definitely not a blank slate. What makes the argument persuasive is the attempt to import the scientific method - hypotheses falsifiable by experiment - to an area previously characterised by mumbojumbo and pseudoscience. Not all the attempts are successful, but as they say it's a start. 100 years late (for psychology) it is saying (a) the brain is an organ so it must have evolved too - let's think about it in a Darwinian fashion and (b) let's try to make pyschology a science not a humanity. It is potentially very offensive to existing psychology practitioners, because it implies that most existing psychologists are witch doctors. It is also very offensive to large bodies of public policy wonks (let's not beat about the bush here - in American speak this book is very offensive to liberal Democrats), essentially saying that most of the "science" behind social and educational policy has no foundation. And because it is polemical - it is shooting at a century of vested interests after all - it overstates its case in some places, although the writers are usually very careful to stress that while behavioural programmes may be partly pre installed, behaviour itself is not hardwired. It was the start for me of looking at the way we think in a completely different light and led me to later, more detailed, more balanced statements of the case. It is pretty hard going in places, particularly as they do rather tiresomely go out of their way trying to avoid giving direct offence, but they're not fooling anyone (not mss67 for a start.)But in reality they are yelling that the Emperor ("learning/nurture is all") has no clothes. For all its faults it's the book that has most influenced my thinking in the last 10 years, and definitely a five star performance.
Rating:
Summary: Evolution from Several Vantages
Review: This book is a massive tome on evolutionary factors that influence human behavior. It begins with clarification of the kind of Darwinism the authors appeal to, so that everyone is on the same page, and considers the general psychological foundations of Darwinism on culture. The book then moves on to discuss cognitive adaptations for social exchange, citing human and non-human examples. The book also includes the evolutionary psychology of mating and sex, examining preferences for mate selection and competition, mechanisms for sexual attraction, and the evolutionary use of women as chattel (something any Old Testament and Quran reader can relate to). A significant portion of the book is devoted to parental care and children, examining how pregnancy sickness, patterns between twins, maternal-infant vocalizations, and child play in the form of chasing each other are all evolutionary mechanisms that continue to be featured. Steven Pinker adds an essay on natural language and natural selection; Roger Shepard contributes an essay on the man's perceptual adaptation to the natural world; both of which demonstrate the interconnectedness between perception, language, and adaptation. The book concludes with some of its most esoteric issues: environmental aesthetics, intrapsychic processes, and the theoretical implications of culural phenomena. The whole book, while not necessarily over-academic, is ultimately dense reading. Most of the concepts and conceptualizations require mental work to apprehend, while the statistics and empirical evidence are clearly described. While drawing from many disparate areas of evolutionary biology, all the essays find their ultimate significance in how the mind, in particular, has adapted to environmental forces. A demanding, but facinating, read.
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