489 ratings (3.85 avg)
1 review
more photos (1)

Simone Barbera

Add friend

Simone’s Bookshelves

to-read‎ (0)
currently-reading‎ (0)

read‎ (601)
did-not-finish‎ (0)

abandoned‎ (1)

Stats | More…

“Across the broad sweep of human history, societies either were governed autocratically by someone who disposed of a state bureaucracy or had something resembling early democracy where the state was absent, power was decentralized, and their overall size was likely to be small. The idea that one could sustain a democracy in a polity as large as the thirteen American colonies, combined with a central state, was unprecedented”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

1 likes

“in more and more spheres of American life, well-intentioned people who genuinely believe that they are fighting for righteous causes are doing what they can to make racial identity the all-encompassing dividing line of American life.”
― Yascha Mounk, The Great Experiment: Why Diverse Democracies Fall Apart and How They Can Endure

6 likes

“When Europeans first came to learn of the imperial examination system, they expressed their admiration for it. This was true of Matteo Ricci, the Jesuit missionary who provided one of the earliest and most detailed European accounts of life in China. In later centuries Europeans drew on the Chinese experience as they constructed meritocratic recruitment systems of their own.”
― David Stasavage, The Decline and Rise of Democracy: A Global History from Antiquity to Today

1 likes

“Oxytocin, the luv hormone, makes us more prosocial to Us and worse to everyone else. That’s not generic prosociality. That’s ethnocentrism and xenophobia. In other words, the actions of these neuropeptides depend dramatically on context—who you are, your environment, and who that person is. As we will see in chapter 8, the same applies to the regulation of genes relevant to these neuropeptides.”
― Robert M. Sapolsky, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

2 likes

“Some groups inevitably suffered more fitness-reducing events – experiences that negatively impacted their ability to survive and pass on their genes. And these were the groups that ended up being more cooperative than those that suffered less. What’s more, these positive effects on cooperativeness were stronger when shared suffering resulted from intergroup conflict than from natural disaster. In short, doing badly made the group pull together more tightly.”
― Harvey Whitehouse, Inheritance: The Evolutionary Origins of the Modern World

1 likes

More of Simone’s quotes…

recent posts
Simone’s Groups

Goodreads Librarians Group — 323552 members — last activity 0 minutes ago
Goodreads Librarians are volunteers who help ensure the accuracy of information about books and authors in the Goodreads' catalog. The Goodreads Libra ...more

Goodreads Italia — 25202 members — last activity 3 hours, 40 min ago
Goodreads Italia è un luogo d'incontro per gli utenti italiani e italofoni della piattaforma Goodreads. Il gruppo, nato nel 2010 e in costante evoluz ...more

Correggere&creare — 842 members — last activity 21 hours, 44 min ago
Richieste ferme per smaltimento coda Un gruppo di aiuto per chi, con calma (proverbio reggiano: Stam sò d'adòs), richiede correzioni e/o creazioni di ...more

The History Book Club — 26136 members — last activity May 11, 2026 04:02PM
"Interested in history - then you have found the right group". The History Book Club is the largest history and nonfiction group on Goodread ...more

Non Fiction Book Club — 5112 members — last activity 19 hours, 36 min ago
This group is for anyone who enjoys Non Fiction. Genres discussed here include Histories, Autobiographies, Biographies, Memoirs, Science and Technolog ...more

More of Simone’s groups…