Behave

It took me a while (26 hours) to finish the audiobook Behave: The Biology Of Humans At Our Best and Worst by Robert Sapolsky. This was a very technical book looking at behavior from various angles including neurobiology, psychology, endocrinology, genetics, neurology, chemistry, and culture. The author is a neuroendrocrinologist and author. He teaches biology, neurology, neurological sciences and neurosurgery at Stanford.  He starts off talking about what he would do to Hitler if he had the chance. I thought his choices were creative and frightening. First he would take away Hitler's ability to move and communicate. Then he would inject him with slow-growing, painful cancers so he would have to suffer terribly for years without the ability to complain. He also mentions Hitler towards the end of the book. Have you heard of the Christmas truce during world war one when the German troops and the British troops called off the war for the Christmas holiday? The truce gave them a chance to pick up the dead and wounded soldiers and they also played a soccer game together? According to Sapolsky, there was one German soldier who objected to the truce. The objecting soldier was Hitler. This book tackles opposite behaviors. Liberals and conservatives are one example. The author claims that if a liberal is mugged they become a conservative. Reading this book was tough at times but he added enough interesting anecdotes to illustrate his points to keep in interesting. If I had to sum up what I learned about behavior in a few words, I would say, "Behavior is complicated." Behave was challenging but challenging can be good for me sometimes. I have always been fascinated by people and their behavior. When someone does something that surprised me I try to think about what could have happened in their past to account for their decision. He mentions one patient in the book who had a brain tumor. One of his symptoms was that every time the patient told a lie, he had a seizure. That kind of stuff just fascinates me. I liked this book even though I'm not going to remember all that I learned.