Mean Genes: From Sex to Money to Food, Taming Our Primal Instincts
Author: Terry Burnham, Jay Phelan
List Price: $14.00
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ISBN: 0142000078
Publisher: Penguin USA (Paper) (28 August, 2001)
Sales Rank: 84,822
Average Customer Rating: 4.6 out of 5
Customer Reviews
Rating: 5 out of 5
Mean Genes Rocks!
Wow. This book made me laugh, was extremely informative, and has already changed my life. I've always battled with my weight. Now I realize that my urge for chocolate or a second helping comes from deep within my evolutionary history, not some innate weakness of character. Now when I consider that hot-fudge sundae, I know I want it not because I'm bad or weak, but becuase once upon a time it paid to indulge when I could, in an environment where food was scarce.
Somehow the knowledge of where these and other urges come from makes it easier for me to resist them. When I feel weak, I don't beat myself up. I make changes in my environment to achieve my goals, instead of just trying to "outwill" my mean genes. I feel more powerful because I have a better understanding what it is that I'm fighting.
It's not often that a book can be this informative and obviously well-researched, and so hard to put down. Best of all, Mean Genes offers practical advice on how to gain control over our lives and achieve the goals we set for ourselves. Worth every penny.
Rating: 5 out of 5
An avant-garde book on how science is important to our lives
Great read! This was undoubtedly the best book I have read this year. Mean Genes, in an entertaining and comfortable way, teaches us a lot about ourselves we may not be aware of, or that we simply tend to ignore. We are creatures in the same web of life as all other animals- and thus we can view some of our behavior in light of genetic and biological principles. It may sound like advanced science, but it really is understandable. The unique aspect of this book, and why I think it deserves so much merit, is that it offers lessons that could actually help us improve our lives in a meaningful way. At first glance, you wonder, how could a book about genes actually do that? The book is helpful because it allows us to gain perspective on the nature of our relationships with friends and loved ones, why we enter relationships and what we expect from them; why we tend to accumulate debt and gamble, why we might and might not like risk, what the basis of our vision of beauty is, and more. It is a whole new angle on human nature- one that is grounded in evolutionary and scientific facts, and one that illuminates the fact that the more we understand about our ancestors and how our behavioral tendencies evolved, the more we can appreciate and understand each other and get along! The ideas in this book can really change the way we look at each other.
Rating: 5 out of 5
Fabulous
I had the honor of reading "Mean Genes" as a textbook when Dr. Phelen, the co-author, taught my Life Science Class at UCLA. This is book worthy of ANY generation's read-I particularly thought it "answered" some of those questions of life that torment the average college student, let alone humans. The insights and personal stories add warmth to "Mean Genes, and the book is immensely enjoyable (hardly "textbook" like.) Overall-buy the book for keeps-you will want to keep it as a manual for life.
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