Razib Khan
Geneticist and writer on human population genetics, history and evolution; author of the Unsupervised Learning newsletter.
Defenders of the Truth: The Battle for Science in the Sociobiology Debate and Beyond by Ullica Segerstråle
Though written accessibly, Segerstrale’s narrative rewards repeat reading, because it is so dense with historical detail that remains relevant today.
on razibkhan.com · 1 Jan 2026
From Dawn to Decadence: 1500 to the Present: 500 Years of Western Cultural Life by Jacques Barzun
Few will deeply read as many works of literature across the Western canon as Barzun did, given his exceptionally long career in academia, but From Dawn to Decadence grants the humble reader an extraordinary vantage, thanks to Barzun’s vast corpus of knowledge and his perspicacious observations about cultural currents across half a millennium.
on razibkhan.com · 1 Jan 2026
Intelligence: All That Matters by Stuart Ritchie
and there’s a good chance you may never need another work of psychometrics to be up to speed.
on razibkhan.com · 1 Jan 2026
The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilization by Bryan Ward-Perkins
The genius of this work is its interdisciplinary scope.
on razibkhan.com · 1 Jan 2026
The Secret of Our Success: How Culture Is Driving Human Evolution, Domesticating Our Species, and Making Us Smarter by Joseph Henrich
A decade on, it already feels possible that in the future, commentators will argue that this specific fruitful synthesis lit the fuse on evolutionary cultural anthropology’s explosion (with due apologies to earlier books from L. L. Cavalli-Sforza, E. O. Wilson, Peter Richerson and Robert Boyd).
on razibkhan.com · 1 Jan 2026
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