Latest / New Books in American Studies
Nadine Weidman, "Killer Instinct: The Popular Science of Human Nature in Twentieth-Century America" (Harvard UP, 2021)
A historian of science examines key public debates about the fundamental nature of humans to ask why a polarized discourse about nature versus nurture became so entrenched in the popular sciences of animal and human behavior. Are humans innately aggressive or innately cooperative? In the 1960s, bestselling books enthralled American readers with the startling claim that humans possessed an instinct for violence inherited from primate ancestors. Critics responded that humans were inherently loving and altruistic. The resulting debate fiercely contested and highly public left a lasting…
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