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Robert Trivers is one of the most significant scholars of the 20th and 21st Century, an evolutionary biologist whose theories have influenced the way people understand Evolution. His followers believe that his research has thoroughly explored and provided a scientific explanation for every aspect of human behavior.
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Order of Robert Trivers Non-Fiction Books
| # | Read | Title | Published | Details |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Social Evolution | 1985 | Description / Buy | |
| 2 | Genomic Imprinting and Kinship | 2001 | Description / Buy | |
| 3 | Natural Selection and Social Theory | 2002 | Description / Buy | |
| 4 | The Anatomy of a Fraud | 2009 | Description / Buy | |
| 5 | The Folly of Fools | 2011 | Description / Buy | |
| 6 | Deceit and Self-Deception | 2011 | Description / Buy | |
| 7 | Wild Life | 2015 | Description / Buy |
The work he did in the 1970s went to great lengths to quantify the driving factors behind ordinary relationships. He explained the root causes and consequences of male to female, parent to child, sibling to sibling, and acquaintance to acquaintance relationships.
He also attempted to tackle the relationships people have with themselves. A significant portion of Richard Dawkins’ most prominent works were inspired by Robert Trivers’ work. The evolutionary biologist was born in 1943 in Washington, D.C.
His family had seven children of which the author was the second born. His father, Howard, was a clever man. But he didn’t achieve much. The son of a rich Lithuanian immigrant with a successful rag trade business, Howard, who initially went to Germany to study Philosophy only to flee in 1938 in light of the war, joined the Army. His achievements during WWII where such that he was awarded a position in the State Department.
Robert Trivers was a precocious child whose intelligence was difficult to ignore in the diplomatic household in which he was raised.
A former student of the Phillips Academy Andover in Massachusetts, his teachers took note of the author’s mental prowess early on. He was 14 when he taught himself calculus, a feat that was made more impressive by the fact that he accomplished it in three months.
By the time he enrolled at Harvard, Trivers had already taken two advanced Math courses. So there was no question in anyone’s mind that he would adopt the subject at Harvard. No one expected the student to lose interest in Math practically overnight.
Neither did they expect him to pursue the legal field. To some people, this shift in disciplines was just another manifestation of his genius. At the time, Trivers argued that he wanted to fight injustice and becoming a lawyer would enable him to do just that.
To achieve this new dream, he attempted to study American history at Harvard. But then he suffered a mental breakdown, the first of many. The interruption compelled the author to study art. This, in turn, earned him several gigs as an illustrator. He was also hired to write high school textbooks. For some reason, his employers decided to task him with the writing of biology volumes.
When they realized that his history studies hadn’t prepared him for such an undertaking, they replaced the human biology job with one concerning animals. Trivers took to this new project with fervor; along the way, he encountered and fell in love with evolution.
Trivers realized that the concept of natural selection could explain every facet of human existence. He met and became a student of Billy Drury, an ornithologist who shaped the author’s way of thinking. The series of textbooks Trivers eventually published was supposed to transform man’s understanding of animal behavior. But because it spoke of evolution as a fact rather than a theory, Robert Trivers believes that Christian Conservatives killed it.
Trivers went on to pursue a doctorate in biology, taking Ernest Williams, a curator of herpetology, as a mentor. His research and renown earned him teaching positions at Harvard University, the University of California, Santa Cruz, Rutgers University, and the Berlin Institute for Advanced Study.
Robert Trivers Awards
The author was a recipient of the Crafoord Prize in 2007.
Best Robert Trivers Books
To many people, Trivers is one of the most influential voices in the history of evolutionary biology, with some of the best books in his bibliography including:
The Folly of Fools: Opportunities to lie to oneself arise every single day. This volume from Robert Trivers argues that self-deceit is an evolutionary trait that emerged to enable individual human beings to more effectively deceive others. He explains that deceit and self-deceit are costly but they are critical to the survival of the species.
The Adventures of an Evolutionary Biologist: Robert Trivers is one of the greatest thinkers the West has ever produced. His texts changed the way evolution is perceived. But his life wasn’t quite as sanitized as people presume. This book tries to provide insight into the mind of a scientist that went to prison, formed a friendship with the chairman of the Black Panthers, and protected homosexuals in Jamaica through his armed group.
When Does The Next Robert Trivers book come out?
Robert Trivers doesn't seem to have an upcoming book. Their newest book is Wild Life and was released on November, 20th 2015. It is the newest book in the Robert Trivers Non-Fiction Books.