Why do we do the things we do? attempts to answer that question, looking at it from every angle. He hops back in time, in stages, ultimately ending up at the deep history of our species and its evolutionary legacy. The result is a dazzling tour of the science of human , a majestic synthesis that harvests cutting-edge research across a range of disciplines to provide a subtle and nuanced perspective on why we ultimately do the things we do-- for good...

"We humans like to think of ourselves as highly evolved creatures. But if we are supposedly evolution's greatest creation, why do we have such bad knees? Why do we catch head colds so often--two hundred times more often than a dog? How come our wrists have so many useless bones? Why is the vast majority of our genetic code pointless? And are we really supposed to swallow and breathe through the same narrow tube? Surely there's been some kind of mistake....