Here is one biologist's interpretation of the chronology of life during the last six hundred million years of earth history: an extended essay that draws on the author's own data and a wide-ranging literature survey to discuss the nature and dynamics of evolutionary change in organisms and their biological surroundings. Geerat Vermeij demonstrates that escalation--the process by which species adapt to, or are limited by, their enemies as the latter increase in ability to acquire and retain resources--has been a dominant theme in the history of life despite frequent episodes of extinction.

Here is one biologist's interpretation of the chronology of life during the last six hundred million years of earth history: an extended essay that draws on the author's own data and a wide-ranging literature survey to discuss the nature and dynamics of evolutionary change in organisms and their biological surroundings. Geerat Vermeij demonstrates that escalation--the process by which species adapt to, or are limited by, their enemies as the latter increase in ability to acquire and retain resources--has been a dominant theme in the history of life despite frequent episodes of extinction.

A famed political scientist's classic argument for a more cooperative world We assume that, in a world ruled by natural selection, selfishness pays. So why cooperate? In The Evolution of Cooperation, political scientist Robert Axelrod seeks to answer this question. In 1980, he organized the famed Computer Prisoners Dilemma Tournament, which sought to find the optimal strategy for survival in a particular game. Over and over, the simplest strategy, a cooperative program called Tit for Tat, shut out the competition. In other words, cooperation, not unfettered competition, turns out to be our best chance for survival. A vital book for leaders and decision makers, The Evolution of Cooperation reveals how cooperative principles help us think better about everything from military strategy, to political elections, to family dynamics.

From humans to hermit crabs to deep water plankton, all living things compete for locally limiting resources. This universal truth unites three bodies of thought--economics, evolution, and history--that have developed largely in mutual isolation. Here, Geerat Vermeij undertakes a groundbreaking and provocative exploration of the facts and theories of biology, economics, and geology to show how processes common to all economic systems--competition, cooperation, adaptation, and feedback--govern evolution as surely as they do the human economy, and how historical patterns in both human and nonhuman evolution follow from this principle. Using a wealth of examples of evolutionary innovations, Vermeij argues that evolution and economics are one. Powerful consumers and producers exercise disproportionate controls on the characteristics, activities, and distribution of all life forms. Competition-driven demand by consumers, when coupled with supply-side conditions permitting economic growth, leads to adaptation and escalation among organisms. Although disruptions in production halt or reverse these processes temporarily, they amplify escalation in the long run to produce trends in all economic systems toward greater power, higher production rates, and a wider reach for economic systems and their strongest members. Despite our unprecedented power to shape our surroundings, we humans are subject to all the economic principles and historical trends that emerged at life's origin more than 3 billion years ago. Engagingly written, brilliantly argued, and sweeping in scope, Nature: An Economic History shows that the human institutions most likely to preserve opportunity and adaptability are, after all, built like successful living things.

The driving forces of natural selection leave their traces in the shapes of living creatures and their patterns of distribution. In this thoughtful and wide-ranging discussion of evolutionary process and adaptive response, Geerat Vermeij elucidates the general principles that underlie the great diversity of marine forms found in the world's great oceans.

In this widely discussed and influential book, Herman Kahn probes the dynamics of escalation and demonstrates how the intensification of conflict can be depicted by means of a definite escalation ladder, ascent of which brings opponents closer to all-out war. At each rung of the ladder, before the climb proceeds, decisions must be made based on numerous choices. Some are clear and obvious, others obscure, but the options are always there. Thermonuclear annihilation, says Kahn, is unlikely to come through accident; but nations may elect to climb the ladder to extinction. The basic material for the book was developed in briefings delivered by Kahn to military and civilian experts and revised in the light of his findings of a trip to Vietnam in the 1960s. In On Escalation he states the facts squarely. He asks the reader to face unemotionally the terrors of a world fully capable of suicide and to consider carefully the alternatives to such a path. In the never-never land of nuclear warfare, where nuclear incredulity is pervasive and paralyzing to the imagination even for the professional analyst, salient details of possible scenarios for the outbreak of war, and even more for war fighting, are largely unexplored or even unnoticed. For scenarios in which war is terminated, the issues and possibilities of which are almost completely unstudied, the situation is even worse. Kahn's discussion throws light on the terrain and gives the individual a sense of the range of possibilities and complexities involved and are useful.

We are currently experiencing a wide range of evolving problems that threaten us with extinction. However, Phillips argues that we have the capacity-with the aid of a broad approach to the scientific method that builds on Mills's concept of "the sociological imagination"-to confront these problems ever more effectively. This book develops and builds upon new methods for addressing such social problems as global warming, terrorism, growing inequalities, and others. Phillips reveals procedures for achieving conscious evolution by uncovering fundamental assumptions and their contradictions and by moving toward alternative assumptions that promise to resolve these contradictions.