Being Human: How our biology shaped world history (Hardback) - Lewis Dartnell

'Illuminating' TIM MARSHALL, bestselling author of The Future of Geography
'Refreshing' THOMAS HALLIDAY, bestselling author of Otherlands

Our biology will change how you see the world. Lewis Dartnell explores how human biology has shaped relationships, societies, economies and wars across the globe

How did haemophilia bring down the Russian royal family? And scurvy give rise to the Mafia?

We are a wonder of evolution. Our exceptional abilities created life as we know it, but we're also deeply flawed. This extraordinary contradiction between our faculties and frailties is the essence of what it means to be human. And history has played out in the balance between them.

Here, Lewis Dartnell tells our story through the lens of this uniquely fragile nature for the first time. From cognitive biases to endemic diseases, he explores how human biology has shaped relationships, societies, economies and wars across the globe - and considers how, importantly, it continues to challenge and define our progress.

'A gripping, red-blooded narrative from a master storyteller' JO MARCHANT, author of Cure
'A wild ride' TIM HARFORD, author of How to Make the World Add Up

About the Author

Lewis Dartnell is an astrobiology researcher and professor at the University of Westminster, and also an Honorary Research Associate at University College London (UCL). He is the author of the bestselling books The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Our World from Scratch and Origins: How the Earth Shaped Human History, which has been translated into 26 languages. He writes for the Guardian, The Times and New Scientist. Copies of The Knowledge exist on the surface of the Moon, and in the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.