Bibliography
reading, but one of the most interesting recent attempts to explain the origins
and signi¿ cance of human language.Delsemme, Armand. Our Cosmic Origins: From the Big Bang to the
Emergence of Life and Intelligence. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1998. A ¿ ne scienti¿ c introduction to the early parts of the course, up
to the evolution of our own species.Diamond, J. Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed. New
York: Penguin, 2005. In this important and readable book, Jared Diamond
compares the histories of many different societies that have undergone
ecological collapse, in order to tease out those factors that may help guide
modern societies through the ecological dangers they face today.———. Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies. London:
Vintage, 1998. A fascinating survey of human history by a biologist who
brings a biologist’s novel insights to many familiar historical problems.Dyson, Freeman. Origins of Life. 2nd ed. Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1999 [1st ed. 1985]. A sometimes technical overview of the complex
problem of explaining the origins of life.Ehrenberg, Margaret. Women in Prehistory. Norman: University of Oklahoma
Press, 1989. A wide-ranging discussion of gender relations in early human
history and a survey of debates about the “origins of patriarchy.”Eldredge, Niles. Darwin: Discovering the Tree of Life. New York: Norton,- One of many ¿ ne introductions to Darwin’s life and thought by one of
the major ¿ gures on modern biological thinking.
———. “The Sixth Extinction.” http://www.actionbioscience.org/
newfrontiers/eldredge2.html#Primer A very useful short summary of the
major eras of extinction in the last 600 million years by one of the leading
biologists of his generation.