Death from a Distance and the Birth of a Humane Universe (Paperback) | Released: 17 Nov 2009

A new biological theory of human uniqueness and theory of everything based in human evolution. Paul M. Bingham & Joanne Souza share the products of more than a decades research into our evolutionary history. Humans communicate, cooperate, reason, coerce, & influence in specific ways that separate us from all other species. Knowledge of how this originally came to be in the human species is crucial to understanding our current social, economic and political behavior. "Death from a Distance and the Birth of a Humane Universe" reads like a gripping novel, while delivering an answer to Darwin's unanswered question; how did humans become unique? The authors, one a molecular & evolutionary biologist and the other a research psychologist, dedicated to the evolutionary logic of human social behavior, have taken us beyond the fundamental concepts of biology into a theory that merges the natural & social sciences. You will gain striking new insights into our evolutionary origins, our innate sexual behavior (yes, both monogamous and promiscuous), our unprecedented approach to childrearing, our language and brain evolution, and our current social/political/economic behaviors. Questions like what caused the demise of Neandertals, the appearance of the agricultural revolution, the growth and cycling of elite empires, the modern economic miracle and the formation of both hierarchical and democratic governments will be answered. Bingham and Souzas work opens an entirely new way of looking at science and the human future. From Foreword Clarion Reviews: Death from a Distance comprehensively unifies what it means to be human and gives readers the skills to analyze how our humanness continues to shape our world. Scholars, students, & general readers will all come away from this book with new insight on the human experience. From other scholars: This book is an astonishingly wide-ranging and provocative overview of evolution, human origins & social organization. Breathtaking in its scope, and ranging from the earliest prehistoric period, through the course of the evolution of life on Earth, this book presents a startlingly original thesis grounded in contemporary evolutionary theory. It will challenge countless well-entrenched theories about who we are as a species, where we came from & where we are going. John J. Shea Dept. of Anthropology, Stony Brook University and more...see book website www.deathfromadistance.com
About the Author: Paul M. Bingham earned his Ph.D. from Harvard University in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, where he also continued to develop his fascination with fundamental unanswered questions about how humans evolved. During his 27-year career on the faculty of Stony Brook University, he has continued to explore human origins while also contributing to fundamental cell and molecular biology, including the discovery of the P element transposon and new approaches to cancer therapy. Joanne Souza is currently a research psychologist and a faculty member at Stony Brook University. She also was a successful business consultant in communications in the health and education markets. In the last seven years she has continued to pursue her life-long research interest in human behavior, evolution, and history.