Blueprint

In his book Blueprint, Nicholas A. Christakis offers a compelling defense of the idea that our genes affect not only our bodies and behaviors but also the ways in which we make societies, ones that are surprisingly similar worldwide. Offering numerous vivid examples, including diverse historical and contemporary cultures, communities formed in the wake of shipwrecks, commune dwellers seeking utopia, online groups thrown together by design or involving artificially intelligent bots, and even the tender and complex social arrangements of elephants and dolphins that so resemble our own, Christakis argues that we humans use our natural behaviors to build humane societies.