100 Books Like Blueprint

Published in 2002, this is the book that pushed the pendulum back from the canard that we are entirely shaped by our environmental circumstances. Pinker confronts the reality that we are biological creatures, but far from painting a cold, deterministic view of human behavior, this book is ultimately a defense of social progress.

Pinker shows that understanding our innate tendencies does not justify discrimination or fatalism but rather empowers us to build better societies by working with, rather than against, human nature. Few books changed the way I see the world, but this is one of them. 

After reading it, I was inspired to go back to school and study biology—in order to merge it with social science—to get a complete picture of what makes us tick.

I’ve always wondered why history turned out the way it did—why some societies enjoy wealth and security and others live in dire poverty. I didn’t know that where we physically live on the planet had such a critical impact on our societies until I read this book. This is literally the history of the world going back to before the Neolithic Revolution. 

The environments we take for granted—for example, whether there are domesticateable large mammals in our midst or whether there is coal near the surface of the ground—have incredible consequences for the inequalities in the world today. I was blown away by reading this book, which explained the world as we know it to me.

This book gave me a profound realization: humans aren’t rational decision-makers—we’re copiers. We survive by inheriting “packages of expertise” passed down through generations, but over time, those packages lose their rationale. When circumstances change, blindly following tradition can become a liability.

My work is about helping people use AI, data, and collaboration to think through the consequences of their actions. This book explains why that’s so difficult—reasoning isn’t what got us here. We memorize and repeat what worked before, even when the world shifts beneath us.

In an increasingly volatile world, that strategy is failing, and this book makes it clear why new approaches to decision-making are needed. If you’ve ever wondered why people resist logic and innovation, this book will change how you see human behavior.

Who wouldn’t want to know where we came from and how we got here? The new science of ancient DNA has upended so many notions about our past that we had held dear. 

I loved how Reich—a leader in this field—explained this new science so accessibly and with great stories to boot. Everything I knew about human history was wrong!

“The bad news is that as a society we’re blowing it.” Not because the GDP isn’t high enough, distinguished psychologist Matthew Lieberman argues, but because we don’t understand basic facts about our social brains: (1) Physical and social pain share the same neurocognitive processes, as do responses to physical and social rewards; (2) Our ability (and proclivity) to mentalize—to understand others’ actions as driven by their thoughts—relies on and competes with a different neural system than nonsocial thinking; (3) Our sense of self is a Trojan horse transmitting social influence and so harmonizing behavior in groups.  As a result, improving our social relations—not increasing our financial wealth—makes us happier; maximizing social capital increases our productivity at work; and engaging our social brains improves our learning. If that gets your attention, you’re ready to read Social. 

For almost four centuries, many philosophers, politicians, and social scientists have considered Thomas Hobbes as having provided great insight into human nature with his “thought experiment” imagining the state of nature as a state of war.  After more than one century, Darwin’s contrary insight in The Descent of Man (1877:125) is finally being given the attention it deserves: the “social instinct” is a more powerful influence on human behavior than “the base principal of selfishness.”  In Moral Origins, one of the best books in this genre, cultural anthropologist Christopher Boehm argues that higher levels of group support increased the survival of hunter gatherer bands and so favored evolution of more altruistic individuals.  Group culture that included gossip, expulsion and other forms of collective social control became ubiquitous as means to suppress free riders and egoistic bullies in human societies.

This is a fascinating book that gives clarity to a difficult topic: how does our brain make decisions? I taught neuroscience before I retired, and I understand that when the semester turns to the cerebrum, details fade into vague and general statements. I confess to cribbing lecture notes from Sapolsky’s popular book because he explains things much more effectively than any textbook. Of course, our behaviors are influenced by immediate circumstances and by past experiences. And, yes, ancestral genetic patterns and molecular dynamics within the neurons also play a role. But so does something as simple as fatigue–and we all know that making lots of decisions can be exhausting and leave us as much in need of food and rest as digging a ditch. Now, I can justify an afternoon nap even if I have only been working at my desk all morning.

Richard Sapolsky is known for his popular… show more.

Most people think concern about how genes influence outcomes like IQ and socioeconomic success is the province of the (far) right—of white supremacists and xenophobes. But Harden forcefully shows us that progressives should care just as much about inequality in genes as we are concerned about unequal environments. 

Both have to do with luck and aren’t “fair.”  She draws a convincing sketch of what a progressive policy around genetics might look like—an anti-eugenics policy that does not deny human nature.

Susan Pinker, a developmental psychologist in Montreal, demonstrates that online communicating can never replace the benefits we derive from face-to-face interpersonal contact. Strong bonds of friendship and love heal us and keep us healthy, just as they help children learn, and just as they extend our lives and make us happy. Looser, secondary in-person bonds also have a significant effect on us. In combination with our close relationships, they form a personal “village” around us composed of networks of connectedness. Susan Pinker presents numerous surprising discoveries from social neuroscience, as well as stories from people’s lives. In the final chapter, she suggests six very practical principles to keep in mind while building our “village.” After all, as she concludes, “Genuine social interaction is a force of nature; we all need some.” 

I was fascinated while reading this book because it taught me so much about how the brain works, why we are the way we are, and how our brains differ. I enjoyed how the author debunked that if we’re more “right-brained,” we’re more creative, and if we’re more “left-brained,” we’re more creative.

The concept is a whole lot more nuanced than that. I also appreciated her take on nature vs. nurture and how that impacts the way our brains work. It took me a long time to read this because there was so much information to digest, but I felt like the education I received from this book was invaluable.