What do you think?
Rate this book
Vida indómita
Considerado por la revista Time uno de los científicos y pensadores más importantes del siglo XX, Robert Trivers es una leyenda viva de la biología y las ciencias sociales. Sin embargo, a diferencia de otros científicos de renombre, Trivers ha estado entre rejas, en alguna ocasión hizo de chófer del líder de los Panteras Negras Huey Newton para ayudarlo a huir y fundó un grupo armado en Jamaica para proteger a los homosexuales frente a la violencia colectiva y los linchamientos.
Con su inimitable voz, Trivers nos habla de la vida indómita que hay tras sus aportaciones científicas y comparte aquí opiniones sobre los temas más dispares, desde el racismo en Norteamérica hasta la historia de la psiquiatría, pasando por quién mató a Peter Tosh, el heredero musical de Bob Marley. Repleto de anécdotas sobre personalidades del ámbito científico como Richard Dawkins o Stephen Jay Gould, este libro interesará y entretendrá a cualquiera que sienta curiosidad por la ciencia, la condición humana o la naturaleza del genio creativo.
“Quién hubiera imaginado que el pensador probablemente más original en teoría de la evolución haya tenido la extraordinaria vida que Robert Trivers cuenta en estas páginas. Trivers nos invita a un viaje delirante […] El resultado son unas memorias extraordinariamente sinceras y únicas de una vida de locos.”
Richard Dawkins
“Uno de los grandes sabios en la historia del pensamiento occidental.”
Steven Pinker
Con su inimitable voz, Trivers nos habla de la vida indómita que hay tras sus aportaciones científicas y comparte aquí opiniones sobre los temas más dispares, desde el racismo en Norteamérica hasta la historia de la psiquiatría, pasando por quién mató a Peter Tosh, el heredero musical de Bob Marley. Repleto de anécdotas sobre personalidades del ámbito científico como Richard Dawkins o Stephen Jay Gould, este libro interesará y entretendrá a cualquiera que sienta curiosidad por la ciencia, la condición humana o la naturaleza del genio creativo.
“Quién hubiera imaginado que el pensador probablemente más original en teoría de la evolución haya tenido la extraordinaria vida que Robert Trivers cuenta en estas páginas. Trivers nos invita a un viaje delirante […] El resultado son unas memorias extraordinariamente sinceras y únicas de una vida de locos.”
Richard Dawkins
“Uno de los grandes sabios en la historia del pensamiento occidental.”
Steven Pinker
228 pages, Kindle Edition
First published January 1, 2015
22 people are currently reading
460 people want to read
About the author
Robert Trivers
14 books111 followersRobert L. Trivers (born February 19, 1943, pronounced /ˈtrɪvɚz/) is an American evolutionary biologist and sociobiologist, most noted for proposing the theories of reciprocal altruism (1971), parental investment (1972), and parent-offspring conflict (1974). Other areas in which he has made influential contributions include an adaptive view of self-deception (first described in 1976) and intragenomic conflict. Along with George C. Williams, Trivers is arguably one of the most influential evolutionary theorists alive today.
A 1961 graduate of Phillips Academy, Andover, Trivers went to Harvard to study mathematics, but wound up studying U.S. history in preparation to become a lawyer. He received his A.B. degree in History on June 16, 1965 from Harvard University. He took a psychology class after suffering a breakdown, and was very unimpressed with the state of psychology. He was prevented from getting into Yale law school by his breakdown, and wound up with a job writing social science textbooks for children (never published, due in part to presenting evolution by natural selection as fact). This exposure to evolutionary theory led him to do graduate work with Ernst Mayr at Harvard 1968-1972. He earned his Ph.D. in Biology on June 15, 1972 also from Harvard University. He was on faculty at Harvard 1973-1978, then moved to UC Santa Cruz.
He met Huey P. Newton, Chairman of the Black Panther Party, in 1978 when Newton applied (while in prison) to do a reading course with him as part of a graduate degree in History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz. Trivers and Newton became close friends: Newton was even godfather to one of Trivers' daughters. Trivers joined the Black Panther Party in 1979. Trivers and Newton published an analysis of the role of self-deception by the flight crew in the crash of Air Florida Flight 90.
Trivers was a faculty member at UC Santa Cruz 1978-1994. He is currently a Rutgers University notable faculty member. In the 2008-2009 academic year, he is a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin).
He wrote the original foreword to Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, and was recently awarded the 2007 Crafoord Prize in Biosciences for "his fundamental analysis of social evolution, conflict and cooperation".
—— From Wikipedia
A 1961 graduate of Phillips Academy, Andover, Trivers went to Harvard to study mathematics, but wound up studying U.S. history in preparation to become a lawyer. He received his A.B. degree in History on June 16, 1965 from Harvard University. He took a psychology class after suffering a breakdown, and was very unimpressed with the state of psychology. He was prevented from getting into Yale law school by his breakdown, and wound up with a job writing social science textbooks for children (never published, due in part to presenting evolution by natural selection as fact). This exposure to evolutionary theory led him to do graduate work with Ernst Mayr at Harvard 1968-1972. He earned his Ph.D. in Biology on June 15, 1972 also from Harvard University. He was on faculty at Harvard 1973-1978, then moved to UC Santa Cruz.
He met Huey P. Newton, Chairman of the Black Panther Party, in 1978 when Newton applied (while in prison) to do a reading course with him as part of a graduate degree in History of Consciousness at UC Santa Cruz. Trivers and Newton became close friends: Newton was even godfather to one of Trivers' daughters. Trivers joined the Black Panther Party in 1979. Trivers and Newton published an analysis of the role of self-deception by the flight crew in the crash of Air Florida Flight 90.
Trivers was a faculty member at UC Santa Cruz 1978-1994. He is currently a Rutgers University notable faculty member. In the 2008-2009 academic year, he is a Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Study in Berlin (Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin).
He wrote the original foreword to Richard Dawkins' The Selfish Gene, and was recently awarded the 2007 Crafoord Prize in Biosciences for "his fundamental analysis of social evolution, conflict and cooperation".
—— From Wikipedia
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews
Read
August 24, 2019A problematic book, I'll leave a rating out.
It's the autobiography of Robert Trivers, a famous evolutionary biologist, and if you're into anecdotes of famous biologists, you'll find lots here (a bit of Lynn Margulis, a lot on Ernst Mayr, William Drury, Richard Dawkins, etc.). If you're looking for that then you can read about 30-40% of the book happily! As a biologist you can't get past some of Trivers' work, I especially remember this paper from my undergrad days, on how haplodiploid insects like ants or bees can evolve social structures.
Much more of the book is about the author's life and studies in Jamaica, and what a violent society is, and what a stud and/or weed-smoker the author is. That's the less interesting part, and it's the uncomfortable part as the author regales you partially with the tales of their sexual exploits, and how great Jamaica is for that, and how much weed they smoked etc. pp.
There's a lot of what we Germans call 'Altherrenwitz' (old men's humor) in this book, and it's amazing that it was published like this just 4 years ago - 2 or 3 years later, once #metoo was in full swing, and this would have caused more of a stir (or it would have been edited down more by the editors), some quotes:
This culminates with this sentence in the acknowledgments:
And then it all finally clicked for me - it's the same Rivers who got caught up in the Epstein revelations, the guy who defended Epstein with the quote 'By the time they're 14 or 15, they're like grown women were 60 years ago, so I don't see these acts as so heinous', and this tone runs through the entire book, and that makes for a very uncomfortable read in 2019.
P.S.:
A completely random paragraph that comes out of the blue and quickly disappears back into it:
!?!?!??!
It's the autobiography of Robert Trivers, a famous evolutionary biologist, and if you're into anecdotes of famous biologists, you'll find lots here (a bit of Lynn Margulis, a lot on Ernst Mayr, William Drury, Richard Dawkins, etc.). If you're looking for that then you can read about 30-40% of the book happily! As a biologist you can't get past some of Trivers' work, I especially remember this paper from my undergrad days, on how haplodiploid insects like ants or bees can evolve social structures.
Much more of the book is about the author's life and studies in Jamaica, and what a violent society is, and what a stud and/or weed-smoker the author is. That's the less interesting part, and it's the uncomfortable part as the author regales you partially with the tales of their sexual exploits, and how great Jamaica is for that, and how much weed they smoked etc. pp.
There's a lot of what we Germans call 'Altherrenwitz' (old men's humor) in this book, and it's amazing that it was published like this just 4 years ago - 2 or 3 years later, once #metoo was in full swing, and this would have caused more of a stir (or it would have been edited down more by the editors), some quotes:
By the way, I did manage to chat up two Eskimo women (not the beautiful ones, of course) to the point where they were willing to invite me back to their home.
The physical beauty [of Jamaica] is overwhelming, the women gorgeous, willing, and plentiful.
This culminates with this sentence in the acknowledgments:
I thank Jeffrey Epstein for supplying an early vision of how the chapters might be organized.
And then it all finally clicked for me - it's the same Rivers who got caught up in the Epstein revelations, the guy who defended Epstein with the quote 'By the time they're 14 or 15, they're like grown women were 60 years ago, so I don't see these acts as so heinous', and this tone runs through the entire book, and that makes for a very uncomfortable read in 2019.
P.S.:
A completely random paragraph that comes out of the blue and quickly disappears back into it:
Nor were the reverberations of Be-be's death limited to my stay in Jamaica. Within a month I was facing down twenty near-homicidal Germans in a bar in Seewiesen, Germany and, a week later, a German doctor bent on injecting a syringe full of tranquilizer into me as I was held by several orderlies in a Göttingen hospital. I declared that no “Nazi” doctor was going to inject anything in me, Germany still being an occupied country. Indeed, the amount he intended to inject would have put me in a coma for a week, if not a month.
!?!?!??!
November 9, 2018
Would have benefited from a good editor. Within the 200 page book, there are about 50 pages of great content regarding academic mentors, friends, and the development of the authors intellectual interests. The remaining 150 pages are a combination of heavy handed attacks on academic enemies, and overly involved stories about the mundanities of life in Jamaica. Worth a quick read, but left me with a somewhat sour taste in my mouth regarding the author.
October 13, 2021
This was a great memoir from Robert Trivers, famed evolutionary biologist. 72 years old at the time of writing, he has little incentive to hold back from speaking his mind, so he doesn't. There are many critiques to be made of this book.
Here are mine:
1. He repeats himself far too often. "Who would later become my mother-in-law" or "at that time I was a committed ganja man." Heard it the first time.
2. Apparently murder is very common in Jamaica. I quickly found myself skipping the many, many accounts of Jamaican murders. There's an expression you'll sometimes hear from tourists who thought they'd never run out of time for fascinating castles: "another boring castle." At the risk of sounding insensitive, the same expression can be applied to churches, temples, and, apparently, accounts of murders in Jamaica.
3. There was a surprisingly high number of grammar errors and typos -- the same words the same words repeated, for example.
Still, if every prominent scholar wrote a book like this at the end of their career, the world would be a better place. My favorite chapters were his homages to his mentors, why he chose to study biology, and the closing chapters in which he reflected on his life and on Jamaica.
I finished the book determined to read more of Trivers' work, to read The Selfish Gene by Dawkins so that I can develop a stronger understanding of natural selection, to further reduce my esteem for Stephen J. Gould, and to continue not visiting Jamaica. Though Trivers still lives in Jamaica, he does also reside in Somerset, New Jersey, and I sincerely regret that I didn't have a clue who he was or that I might seek out a lecture by him while I lived in the Garden State.
I will almost certainly remember Wild Life as one of the ten best books I read this year.
Here are mine:
1. He repeats himself far too often. "Who would later become my mother-in-law" or "at that time I was a committed ganja man." Heard it the first time.
2. Apparently murder is very common in Jamaica. I quickly found myself skipping the many, many accounts of Jamaican murders. There's an expression you'll sometimes hear from tourists who thought they'd never run out of time for fascinating castles: "another boring castle." At the risk of sounding insensitive, the same expression can be applied to churches, temples, and, apparently, accounts of murders in Jamaica.
3. There was a surprisingly high number of grammar errors and typos -- the same words the same words repeated, for example.
Still, if every prominent scholar wrote a book like this at the end of their career, the world would be a better place. My favorite chapters were his homages to his mentors, why he chose to study biology, and the closing chapters in which he reflected on his life and on Jamaica.
I finished the book determined to read more of Trivers' work, to read The Selfish Gene by Dawkins so that I can develop a stronger understanding of natural selection, to further reduce my esteem for Stephen J. Gould, and to continue not visiting Jamaica. Though Trivers still lives in Jamaica, he does also reside in Somerset, New Jersey, and I sincerely regret that I didn't have a clue who he was or that I might seek out a lecture by him while I lived in the Garden State.
I will almost certainly remember Wild Life as one of the ten best books I read this year.
January 18, 2016
The best book I've read this year!
March 20, 2019
This is one very weird but enjoyably forthright autobiography.
January 31, 2019
Very interesting book. Trivers is so far outside of what you expect a successful academic to be like that it made me reconsider the whole category of "academics".
The blurb on the back describes this book as being in the tradition of You're Surely Joking Mr Feynman, and this is an apt comparison. Feynman too was a very unconventional academic (or at least, he didn't conform to my idea of a conventional academic), and in those memoirs he discussed all kinds of wacky adventures from reforming the Brazilian education system to getting into a bar fight to partying for several days straight with prostitutes in Las Vegas. But with Feynman, there was always a sense of that at the end of the day he had his priorities right and nothing would get too out of hand. Like when he starts getting concerned he might be heading towards alcoholism so becomes a teetotaller.
Not so with Trivers, who, were it not for the fact that he's a very smart guy, would no doubt have spent large chunks of his life in prison. He's a big drug user. There's one story where he gets pulled over by the police for drink driving like a maniac, and narrowly avoided being done in for possession of cocaine by virtue of the fact that he hadn't been able to find any. And he was a big marajuana user his whole life. Here's a nice photo of him in a marajuana plantation:
There's another story where he gets arrested for being drunk and acting dangerously around a moving vehicle. The following day, his jailers are acting extremely wary around him and he can't figure out why. His cell mate eventually explains to him:
Almost immediately after this, comes the most incongruous paragraph transition I've ever seen:
As well as drugs, sex and violence also played pretty major parts in Trivers' narratives. Most of his field work was done in Jamaica - which he tolerated despite it being one of the most violent countries in the world in no small part because of its sexually promiscuous norms. At one point Trivers laments his younger self's naivety because he didn't pursue a threesome when one might have been within reach. At another point Trivers stabs a big Jamaican guy (with arguably commensurate provocation) and then lacerates himself to make it look like damage was evenly done to either side (and thus avoid Jamaican's ineffectual justice system). He was also a member of the Black Panthers and didn't have any issue with affiliating with what sounded like a bunch of reprehensible thugs.
Aside from Feynman, the other person who Trivers really reminded me of was Hunter S. Thompson. Here's a bit which sounded particularly HST-y:
And here's a photo of Trivers is looking very much like a Gonzo journalist next to W.D. Hamilton:
Sometimes I wonder how brilliant people end up in cul-de-sac disciplines like zoology. If you're really smart you go into physics or maths because 1) those are the highest prestige disciplines, 2) it's where the problems are that are most tractable to throwing a bunch of brain power at them (ie, no legwork required), 3) they become Schelling points for smart people to congregate to (and smart people will want to be with their own kind). If you can't cut it as a mathematician or physicist, then you try out computer science or statistics. Then maybe psychology or philosophy. Eventually you get to the lowest rungs of sociology and dance studies. But every now and then a genius ends up at one of the lower rungs and revolutionises the field. Why? Why didn't they follow the natural flow of things to end up at maths/physics where they belong? Trivers' story sheds some light on how this can happen. He started out doing a maths degree at Harvard (so far so good), but soon suffered a mental breakdown and subsequently went so far off the rails in terms of antisocial behaviours that there's no way he would've fitted in with the conventional bourgeois lifestyle of high-prestige academia.
That's all very cynical. Here's a more inspiring take away message from this book: You don't have to choose between living a low-risk, unadventurous, conformist lifestyle and achieving social prestige and intellectual fulfilment. If you play your cards right, you can have it both ways.
The blurb on the back describes this book as being in the tradition of You're Surely Joking Mr Feynman, and this is an apt comparison. Feynman too was a very unconventional academic (or at least, he didn't conform to my idea of a conventional academic), and in those memoirs he discussed all kinds of wacky adventures from reforming the Brazilian education system to getting into a bar fight to partying for several days straight with prostitutes in Las Vegas. But with Feynman, there was always a sense of that at the end of the day he had his priorities right and nothing would get too out of hand. Like when he starts getting concerned he might be heading towards alcoholism so becomes a teetotaller.
Not so with Trivers, who, were it not for the fact that he's a very smart guy, would no doubt have spent large chunks of his life in prison. He's a big drug user. There's one story where he gets pulled over by the police for drink driving like a maniac, and narrowly avoided being done in for possession of cocaine by virtue of the fact that he hadn't been able to find any. And he was a big marajuana user his whole life. Here's a nice photo of him in a marajuana plantation:
There's another story where he gets arrested for being drunk and acting dangerously around a moving vehicle. The following day, his jailers are acting extremely wary around him and he can't figure out why. His cell mate eventually explains to him:
"You don't remember what you were yelling when they brought you here last night?" I did not. "You were cursing them left and right, calling them mother-fuckers for holding you for the night."
Almost immediately after this, comes the most incongruous paragraph transition I've ever seen:
In 1980 I had a prestigious fellowship from the Smithsonian and space provided to do a year of tropical research in Panama.
As well as drugs, sex and violence also played pretty major parts in Trivers' narratives. Most of his field work was done in Jamaica - which he tolerated despite it being one of the most violent countries in the world in no small part because of its sexually promiscuous norms. At one point Trivers laments his younger self's naivety because he didn't pursue a threesome when one might have been within reach. At another point Trivers stabs a big Jamaican guy (with arguably commensurate provocation) and then lacerates himself to make it look like damage was evenly done to either side (and thus avoid Jamaican's ineffectual justice system). He was also a member of the Black Panthers and didn't have any issue with affiliating with what sounded like a bunch of reprehensible thugs.
Aside from Feynman, the other person who Trivers really reminded me of was Hunter S. Thompson. Here's a bit which sounded particularly HST-y:
It was these actual details [of a murder] that soon came to trouble me and, in fact, set me off on a ten-day tear in which I ended up "investigating" the crime, sleeping two to four hours night, smoking ganja [marajuana] continuously, and so polarizing the community that by the end of my stay some men were carrying guns against me, and I had to seek refuge in my lawyer's home By then I had also had several physcial fights, both in Southfield and elsewhere, inccluding one in a Kingston night club that resulted in an icepick being shoved almost completely though my left hand.
And here's a photo of Trivers is looking very much like a Gonzo journalist next to W.D. Hamilton:
Sometimes I wonder how brilliant people end up in cul-de-sac disciplines like zoology. If you're really smart you go into physics or maths because 1) those are the highest prestige disciplines, 2) it's where the problems are that are most tractable to throwing a bunch of brain power at them (ie, no legwork required), 3) they become Schelling points for smart people to congregate to (and smart people will want to be with their own kind). If you can't cut it as a mathematician or physicist, then you try out computer science or statistics. Then maybe psychology or philosophy. Eventually you get to the lowest rungs of sociology and dance studies. But every now and then a genius ends up at one of the lower rungs and revolutionises the field. Why? Why didn't they follow the natural flow of things to end up at maths/physics where they belong? Trivers' story sheds some light on how this can happen. He started out doing a maths degree at Harvard (so far so good), but soon suffered a mental breakdown and subsequently went so far off the rails in terms of antisocial behaviours that there's no way he would've fitted in with the conventional bourgeois lifestyle of high-prestige academia.
That's all very cynical. Here's a more inspiring take away message from this book: You don't have to choose between living a low-risk, unadventurous, conformist lifestyle and achieving social prestige and intellectual fulfilment. If you play your cards right, you can have it both ways.
January 15, 2016
As my husband was researching his theory of sex, I heard a lot about Robert Trivers. My husband was very impressed with his writings on reciprocal altruism and paternal investment. So, it was with great interest that I started to read this book and I was not disappointed.
Dr. Trivers has indeed had a wild life and this memoir recounts some of his more interesting escapades. Early in his career, he went to Jamaica to study lizards and ended up getting very involved in living, loving and fighting with the native human population. He openly admits his fondness for ganja and is willing to reflect on both the successes and the failures of his life. The book was an entertaining read, consisting of a series of anecdotes, some funny, some scary, some shocking. I loved the stories in the book which paid tribute to other scientists and mentors. I also admired the author's willingness to discuss his own bouts of mania.
As Dr. Trivers now reconsiders how he feels about Jamaica he seems saddened by the newer tourism models of all inclusive resorts there. I have stayed at some of these resorts and they are quite nice from a visitor’s point of view, but they do reinforce the idea of only being safe inside the walls. Dr. Trivers laments that Jamaica still has one of the highest murder rates anywhere. I can’t help but wonder if the murder and violence of the Jamaican society might be an inevitable and inherent consequence of disenfranchised men in a predominantly matriarchal society with high paternity uncertainty. In my dreams, I would like to listen to my husband and Dr. Trivers have a conversation about this.
Dr. Trivers has indeed had a wild life and this memoir recounts some of his more interesting escapades. Early in his career, he went to Jamaica to study lizards and ended up getting very involved in living, loving and fighting with the native human population. He openly admits his fondness for ganja and is willing to reflect on both the successes and the failures of his life. The book was an entertaining read, consisting of a series of anecdotes, some funny, some scary, some shocking. I loved the stories in the book which paid tribute to other scientists and mentors. I also admired the author's willingness to discuss his own bouts of mania.
As Dr. Trivers now reconsiders how he feels about Jamaica he seems saddened by the newer tourism models of all inclusive resorts there. I have stayed at some of these resorts and they are quite nice from a visitor’s point of view, but they do reinforce the idea of only being safe inside the walls. Dr. Trivers laments that Jamaica still has one of the highest murder rates anywhere. I can’t help but wonder if the murder and violence of the Jamaican society might be an inevitable and inherent consequence of disenfranchised men in a predominantly matriarchal society with high paternity uncertainty. In my dreams, I would like to listen to my husband and Dr. Trivers have a conversation about this.
December 8, 2017
No esperéis leer mucho sobre ciencia en la impresionante biografía (con bastante violencia, riesgo y autoengaño incluidos) del influyente Bob Trivers. Mucho carácter y muy entretenido, eso sí. Y ayuda a entender la personalidad de grandes científicos como él y otros que analiza (y valora subjetivamente sin ambages).
December 27, 2016
Strong start, but gets weaker at the end as he sinks further into unresolved delusions.
November 22, 2023
You might call me unlucky, but I prefer to say that the scimitar of natural selection has often been raised high above my head.
cephalic index of one – believed to be ideal in cold climates because optimal for heat conservation.
Since the whole function of sex is to break up genotypes to produce novel variation that will out-reproduce the prior forms, younger men might be more attractive because they have more recently reshuffled genes.
It is a little known fact outside of Herpetology that all lizard and snake males have two penises, one on the left side and one on the right.
In any case, seeing the tactical value of deception firsthand made me relax my moral and moralistic aversion to it. This permitted me to study it more freely, which helped when I later wrote a book on the subject.
The idea was that self-deception evolved in order the better to deceive others.
do you believe in free will?” I answered that I didn't know what people actually meant when they used the term but that I believed organisms had the ability to look back on their actions and decide whether they wanted to repeat them.
the conventional view that natural selection favors nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a very naïve view of mental evolution.”
Allometry refers to the way in which two variables are associated.
expectation is a powerful guide to action.”
“The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.”
cephalic index of one – believed to be ideal in cold climates because optimal for heat conservation.
Since the whole function of sex is to break up genotypes to produce novel variation that will out-reproduce the prior forms, younger men might be more attractive because they have more recently reshuffled genes.
It is a little known fact outside of Herpetology that all lizard and snake males have two penises, one on the left side and one on the right.
In any case, seeing the tactical value of deception firsthand made me relax my moral and moralistic aversion to it. This permitted me to study it more freely, which helped when I later wrote a book on the subject.
The idea was that self-deception evolved in order the better to deceive others.
do you believe in free will?” I answered that I didn't know what people actually meant when they used the term but that I believed organisms had the ability to look back on their actions and decide whether they wanted to repeat them.
the conventional view that natural selection favors nervous systems which produce ever more accurate images of the world must be a very naïve view of mental evolution.”
Allometry refers to the way in which two variables are associated.
expectation is a powerful guide to action.”
“The truth is, everyone is going to hurt you. You just got to find the ones worth suffering for.”
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
August 13, 2025
To bardzo chaotyczna i „nierówna” książka. Przewijają się w niej dwa wątki: naukowy (mniej obecny) i związany z osobistym życiem autora (bardziej obecny i to w dużej mierze do niego odnosi się tytuł, bo życie Autor miał nadzwyczaj barwne). Wątek naukowy dotyczy pracy naukowej, mentorów, współpracowników, jest uporządkowany, chronologiczny i w ciekawy sposób opisuje tematykę biologii ewolucyjnej. Temat osobisty, dotyczy w dużej mierze Jamajki i różnych doświadczeń (zazwyczaj związanych z niebezpiecznymi z różnych względów sytuacjami, w których Autor się znalazł), trudno go nazwać uporządkowanym (pewna wątki się powtarzają, część urywa się bez konkluzji a pewne zapowiadane wydarzenie nie zostały opisane) i stanowi wyraźny kontrast dla części „naukowej”, sprawiając wręcz wrażenie jakby szkicu powieści przygodowej lub thrillera.
December 24, 2023
I wish I had nice things to say about this book, but I don't. It is so disjointed. I felt like he was telling stories with inside jokes that only he and a few other people, maybe, understood. Sometimes it felt like only he was in on the jokes. I particularly did not care for "jokes" about abuse and rape which are in this book. I think he is a bit out of touch.
He lived a very unusual life for sure, but the structure of this book made very little sense. I was way more curious about his relationship with his wife and what it was life raising bi- cultural children, having a mental illness and living between US and Jamaica then stories about his wild experiences. I think if he wrote from that perspective it might have actually been a good book.
He lived a very unusual life for sure, but the structure of this book made very little sense. I was way more curious about his relationship with his wife and what it was life raising bi- cultural children, having a mental illness and living between US and Jamaica then stories about his wild experiences. I think if he wrote from that perspective it might have actually been a good book.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
March 9, 2020
Nie tego się spodziewałam. Książka opowiada głównie o życiu na Jamajce, na której to Trivers spędził co najmniej 18 lat. najdzie się tu kilka ciekawostek zarówno dotyczących zwierząt (samce jaszczurek i węży posiadają po dwa penisy, lewego i prawego), jak i ludzi ("Oto kolejny barwny przykład: najbardziej obraźliwym wyzwiskiem, jakiego jeden Jamajczyk może użyć w stosunku do drugiego, jest "jesteś podpaską" xD) czy jamajskiego stylu życia (morderstwa są na porządku dziennym.
W skrócie: za dużo Jamajki, za mało o ewolucji.
W skrócie: za dużo Jamajki, za mało o ewolucji.
September 11, 2022
I think I would have preferred a book about evolutionary biology to this book about an evolutionary biologist. It delivers what was promised on the cover, though, and is quick and readable. Along the way, I have been entirely persuaded that Jamaica is not a good place for me to go to, even to visit.
January 7, 2023
Memoir of a "happier" time when men could frequent prostitutes while doing their field studies in Jamaica and proudly recount their exploits. The stories -- about both field studies, Jamaica and other escapades -- were generally good entertainment.
June 1, 2023
There's a lot about animals you've never heard of..
.. and gangsterism in Jamaica and the LAPD. All interesting if you read his works and want background into this great biologist. If not, best look at a biography elsewhere.
.. and gangsterism in Jamaica and the LAPD. All interesting if you read his works and want background into this great biologist. If not, best look at a biography elsewhere.
January 7, 2022
Entertaining. Not that much science, but good Trivers lore and memes here
April 26, 2022
Mocna zmyłka w tytule. Więcej w treści awanturniczych przygód i trochę nauki. Ale ogólnie ciekawe.
May 24, 2022
Wszystko czego się spodziewałam, elementy autobiografii i ciekawostki ewolucyjne, a trzeba przyznać, że facet miał ciekawe życie 😆
November 18, 2024
Skończyłam ją chyba tylko z czystego zdumienia ile ego można zmieścić na 360 stronach
December 13, 2016
What a life!
September 15, 2016
Fascinating book by a fascinating man who has had a fascinating life.
February 20, 2020
To much drama not enough science
It was hard for me to relate to this book. I was looking for a little more science and less biographical drama.
It was hard for me to relate to this book. I was looking for a little more science and less biographical drama.
Displaying 1 - 23 of 23 reviews