Overview

From the very beginning, life on Earth has been defined by war. Today, those first wars continue to be fought around and literally inside us, influencing our individual behavior and that of civilization as a whole. War between populations--whether between different species or between rival groups of humans--is seen as an inevitable part of the evolutionary process. The popular concept of the survival of the fittest explains and often excuses these actions. In Population Wars, Greg Graffin points to where the mainstream view of evolutionary theory has led us astray. That misunderstanding has allowed us to justify wars on every level, whether against bacterial colonies or human societies, even when other, less violent solutions may be available. Through tales of mass extinctions, developing immune systems, human warfare, the American industrial heartland, and our degrading modern environment, Graffin demonstrates how an over-simplified idea of war, with its victorious winners and vanquished losers, prevents us from responding to the real problems we face. Along the way, Graffin reveals a paradox: when we challenge conventional definitions of war, we are left with a new problem, how to define ourselves.

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"Through compelling examples and page-turning storytelling, Graffin shows how we got here and what we can do about it.-- ""Michael Shermer, author of The Moral Arc"""

Author Information

Greg Graffin is the lead singer and a songwriter in Bad Religion. Greg obtained his PhD in zoology at Cornell University and a master's in geology from UCLA, and has served as a lecturer in life sciences and paleontology at UCLA. He is the author of Evolution and Religion and coauthor, with Steve Olson, of Anarchy Evolution. Greg received the Bryan Patterson Prize from the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology, the Rushdie Prize from the Harvard University Humanist Chaplaincy, the American Humanist Association Arts Award, and the Sapio Prize from the International League of Non-Religious and Atheists. He travels regularly between the cities he considers home, Ithaca, New York, and Los Angeles, California. A veteran voice artist, Tom Zingarelli has produced and narrated many audiobooks in the last several years. He has also recorded books for the Connecticut State Library for the Blind and Physically Handicapped. His voice was featured on the popular PBS children's television program Between the Lions and in the off-Broadway production of Ruthless, the Musical.

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