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The Everyday Genius: Restoring Children’s Natural Joy of Learning-And Yours Too by Peter Kline

Now in its fifth printing, The Everyday Genius explains the most current thinking about the brain and the optimum conditions for learning. A practical guide for producing confident, eager learners at any age.  – Education Resources

Collapse: How Societies Choose to Fail or Succeed by Jared Diamond

An extraordinary synthesis of natural and social science brought to life by Jared Diamonds astonishing knowledge of history and the nuances and natures of civilizations. – James Robinson, Harvard university

Guns, Germs, and Steel by Jared Diamond

A book review by Danny Yee –  1997   http://dannyreviews.com

Why is it that Europeans ended up conquering so much of the world? Or, as one of Diamond’s New Guinean friends asks him, why do they have all the “cargo”? Despite all the contrary evidence from anthropology and human biology, many persist in attributing the differing political and economic successes of the world’s peoples to biological, “racial” differences. Others appeal to cultural differences or to historical contingency. But Diamond sees the fundamental causes as environmental, resting ultimately on ecological differences between the continents. An extended argument for this, Guns, Germs and Steel is nothing less than a history of Homo sapiens on a scale of continents and millennia.