Chapter 17 (War and Peace) is kind of like a giant review of everything that was discussed in the previous 16 chapters. Sapolsky goes over how if, historically, you consider how terrible some of our behaviors of have been, we have evolved into relatively decent beings, as a whole. Consider acts we once considered normal, burning witches and lobotomies, that are no longer viewed as acceptable. The fact we don’t burn men and women who are suspected of witchcraft, whatever that means, is an improvement. We don’t remove parts of the brain of the mentally ill without serious medical and moral consideration, whereas in the past it was done without question to make these individuals more manageable as they were sent to institutions. These are just two examples of many, we have improved in so many ways. And there is still room for further improvement. Just believing that something can get better can start a chain of events that can lead to change.
The Epilogue is very short, and mostly consists of bullet points of all the themes found in the book. But on the last two pages, the author wrote something that left more of an impression on me than the bulk of the book, which is 675 pages in total, not including the appendix. The fact that I had access to this book, read it, and understood it (to a point), puts me in a better position than most. In his words, it makes me “ideally suited” to try to improve something that is not right in the world, and for this reason I should try to. I’m inspired to try to find something small that I think I can change. And I may not become well known for my efforts to try to make a change, but if I can improve my behavior or the behavior of someone else, then I think I will have made the author proud.
I debated about whether I should include this additional part in my book reviews, but I get such a joy out of it that I decided that I had to. Before I get into it, I just need to say that I am not an editor. I have no formal education in editing, writing, journalism, English, publishing, or any related field. I’m just a person who is fond of reading. Now, when I’m reading a book, if I come across a spelling or grammatical error, I get giddy. A book has been mass produced and I happened to find something incorrect.
I only found one error in this book, a grammatical one, and I almost missed it. The second paragraph on the page begins with the word “the”, but when you read it, it doesn’t sound correct. I believe the sentence should begin with “this”. I’m not going to hold this against anyone (pun intended?). For a book this long, it’s incredible that I only noticed this one very small mistake.
I will also be concluding my reviews with final thoughts. If you like science, biology, psychology, and have a very good working knowledge of the subjects, this is a great book for you. Myself, I had a lot of trouble getting through the book because none of these are my areas of expertise. But it was written in such a way that I was entertained even though I was struggling. The author has a great sense of humor and he does warn you that things will be difficult to understand if you are not well versed in the subject. He is very considerate in his inclusion of an appendix, and his footnotes are informative and funny when it’s appropriate. In a few years, I might pick this up again and hopefully I will be able to better understand what he has taken such immense care to write about.
Nonfiction and Nonsense 