A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race, and Human History

Few ideas have been more harmful than one race or another being inherently superior to others. For this understandable reason, discussion of biological differences between races has been virtually banished from polite academic conversation. Human evolution, the consensus view insists, ended in prehistory. Inconveniently, this view cannot be right. Nicholas Wade, the esteemed science journalist who has long reported on new genetic advances for The New York Times, cites the mounting evidence that human evolution has continued to the present day. Because populations stayed in place for thousands of years, substantially isolated, evolution has proceeded independently on each continent, giving rise to the various races of humankind. Here, Wade explores the possibility that recent human evolution has included changes in social behavior and hence in the nature of human societies. Rejecting unequivocally the notion of racial superiority, he argues that the evolution of the human races holds information critical to the understanding of human societies and history, and that the public interest is best served by pursuing the scientific truth without fear.--From publisher description.