A leading evolutionary psychologist probes the hidden instincts behind our working, shopping, and spending
Evolutionary psychology-the compelling science of human nature-has clarified the prehistoric origins of human behavior and influenced many fields ranging from economics to personal relationships. In Spent Geoffrey Miller applies this revolutionary science’s principles to a new domain: the sensual wonderland of marketing and status seeking that we call American consumer culture. Starting with the basic notion that the goods and services we buy unconsciously advertise our biological potential as mates and friends, Miller examines the hidden factors that dictate our choices in everything from lipstick to cars, from the magazines we read to the music we listen to. With humor and insight, Miller analyzes an array of product choices and deciphers what our decisions say about ourselves, giving us access to a new way of understanding-and improving-our behaviors. Like Freakonomics or The Tipping Point, Spent is a bold and revelatory book that illuminates the unseen logic behind the chaos of consumerism and suggests new ways we can become happier consumers and more responsible citizens.
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- ISBN13: 9780066620824
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Combining captivating storytelling with eye-opening findings, Inviting Disaster delves inside some of history’s worst catastrophes in order to show how increasingly “smart” systems leave us wide open to human tragedy.
Weaving a dramatic narrative that explains how breakdowns in these systems result in such disasters as the chain reaction crash of the Air France Concorde to the meltdown at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Station, Chiles vividly demonstrates how the battle between man and machine may be escalating beyond manageable limits — and why we all have a stake in its outcome.
Included in this edition is a special introduction providing a behind-the-scenes look at the World Trade Center catastrophe. Combining firsthand accounts of employees’ escapes with an in-depth look at the structural reasons behind the towers’ collapse, Chiles addresses the question, Were the towers “two tall heroes” or structures with a fatal flaw?
Inviting Disaster, by technology and history writer James R. Chiles, is an unusual book: it appeals to the macabre desires that keep us riveted to highway accidents, while knowledgeably discoursing on the often preventable mistakes that caused them. At its heart are colorful stories behind more than 50 of the most infamous catastrophes that periodically chilled the advance of the industrial age. There are both those well remembered (the 1986 Challenger explosion, for example) and those now largely forgotten (a 1937 gas explosion at a Texas school that killed 298). But along with lively depictions of these deadly devastations and white-knuckle calamities–the U.S. battleship Maine, Apollo 13, and Three Mile Island among them–Chiles offers an informed analysis of the unfortunate chain of events that brought them about. And by grouping like incidents to show how fatal “system fractures” eventually developed through a combination of human error and mechanical malfunction, he also suggests how we might sidestep such tragedies in the future. In so, doing he fashions these spectacular accounts of failed planes, trains, ships, bridges, dams, factories, and other conveyances and facilities into a cautionary tale about technological progress. –Howard RothmanList Price: $ 15.99
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Tags: air france concorde, american consumer culture, Behavior, chernobyl nuclear power, Consumer, dramatic narrative, Evolution, hidden instincts, human tragedy, nuclear power station, prehistoric origins, product choices, Spent, worst catastrophes