Brain for All Seasons: Human Evolution and Abrupt Climate Change

Winner of the 2002 Phi Beta Kappa Award in Science

Mankind has recently come to the shocking realization that our ancestors survived hundreds of abrupt and severe changes to Earth's climate. In this unique travelogue, William H. Calvin takes us around the globe and back in time, showing us how such cycles of cool, crash, and burn provided the impetus for enormous increases in the intelligence and complexity of human beings—and warning us of human activities that could trigger similarly massive shifts in the planet's climate.

William H. Calvin is an affiliate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the University of Washington School of Medicine in Seattle. He is the author or coauthor of ten books, including Lingua ex Machina, The Cerebral Code, How Brains Think, Conversations with Neil's Brain, and The River That Flows Uphill. The last third of A Brain for All Seasons is based on his cover story "The Great Climate Flip-Flop" in The Atlantic Monthly.