Wild Life: Adventures of an Evolutionary Biologist Paperback – November 20, 2015

Because I'm a freshwater ecologist, Trivers has influenced my work with his ideas of sexual selection. It was good to read of his interactions with Ernst Mayr and Bill Hamilton. But my god, he was straight-out stoned for years, and running around with various women, which of course is his right. His appreciation of the music and politics of Peter Tosh is a saving grace, so I approve, I guess....

This has to be hardest book I've ever reviewed. Both because of it's highly-effective belligerent attitude and because it matches my own general attitude toward life.The pervasive attitude is, 'here's all the blood and guts of my life, not that's it's really any of your business'. I have to admire that after wading through so much prose that's trying to soft soap me or put a happy little spin on everything.As for the content itself, the author does give you interesting glimpses into life among the intellectual elite. His intermittent bouts of bipolar mental illness are also interesting. He also tells fairly interesting stories of his years living in Jamaica. But he's not that great a story teller and his obsession with justice erodes much of the substance of the Jamaica stories. And this also holds true of his account of his time being friends with Huey Newton.I admired his openness about the years he was a heavy ganja smoker. I went through some years like that myself when I was a young man. It affected my emotional development, it arrested it. I don't know if that happened to Mr. Trivers as well.The author also sprinkles a few presentations of his evolutionary biology insights and discoveries throughout. This is definitely the weakest part of the book. The material didn't come through for me. Maybe I'm just obtuse. And the chapter toward the end of the book about his brushes with the greats in evolutionary biology was totally dullsville.The author is such a fierce personality you get the feeling he was born 300 years to late. His real calling would have been as a pirate captain.The end of the book is quite sad. But then again the author had some pretty good innings, so to speak.The book's a quick read, which is the best thing about it.

Dr. Trivers plays the blues. A Crafoord prize led to exposing the stupidity of attackers, expecting to find a treasure in a modest home, and Triver’s way of dealing with them. Modesty. I see modesty is a principal message of Dr. Robert Trivers to academics and readers of all kinds. And I see this is missed in the reviews. Why? Because many salient experiences of a biologist are in the field of life, when they are interpreted, by us or by Robert Trivers, they carry weights from a legion of mentors, disciplines, and magnificent plunges into life itself. This book is about living science. Trivers has indeed influenced our intellectual lives, and knows this, but he also knows and acknowledges, in this unique book, that by stumbling one may validate means and aims. Defending gay rights in Jamaica was counter-current, along with a nod toward Cannabis 30 years ago, or having influential friends in the Black Panthers, or reigning in, by better and deeper theory, the altruist leanings of “family” members. Trivers has been there and done that— enough to constitute real baggage (read conceit) for many writers who dare an autobiography. “Wild Life” provides lucid commentary. Pundits, bandits, beliefs, stories told from experience—all seem rather pale compared to the complete yarn of a uniquely gifted and troubled scientist, who plays the blues, and excels.

I had always wanted to learn more about Trivers after seeing how often his work was referenced. His foundational ideas have had a lot of power in shaping my views about human nature and life in general. I really enjoyed reading this very personal account of a life with much drama and insight. Trivers lays himself bare with an honesty he has probably cultivated after decades of studying self-deception. The insight into the wacky Jamaican life and the human behavior he witnessed there was likely as important a form of field research as the lizards he went there to study.

When I was an undergraduate student, I had a class taught by Robert Trivers. I don't recall the exact name of this course, it was something along the lines of evolutionary biology 101, however I do recall being very fascinated by the subject. The class really opened up my mind to this field and led me to read many other influential thinkers such as Dawkins, Pinker, Wilson, etc.I was quite pleasantly surprised to have accidentally come across Triver’s autobiographical book The Wildlife. I bought it on the spot and started reading it almost immediately. About a third into the book, I realized that this is not quite what I expected.What I thought I would be getting was a thorough reflection and exposition on his life’s work, development of his theories, some new ideas, or maybe interesting speculation about the massive influence he had on the field. To be clear, I wasn’t looking for an academic text, but rather something with a more pop sci flavor, directly from the source. What I got instead was largely a collection of amusing anecdotes about his life in Jamaica and various adventures and mishaps. At most, only 15% of the book was devoted to his life’s work and even less to the reflection of his ideas and contributions to the field.The anecdotes and stories he tells are pretty interesting, albeit quite repetitive in their setting. And the book is generally well written and entertaining, however the content is not at all what I expected. I was also very disappointed that he hasn’t mentioned a single word about his tenure at Rutgers, where he has spent the last 20 years or so.If you are looking for a collection of entertaining and witty anecdotes and adventures, then perhaps this would be a good book for you. Although the adventure genre is already saturated with much more interesting titles. However, if you, like me, were looking for a thoughtful book about the Triver’s ideas, you are likely to be rather disappointed.

To begin with the obvious: this is Professor Robert Trivers' account of his life. It is not a detailed restatement of his theories of evolutionary genetics, a dissertation on the state of the global ecosystem, or a meditation on the nature of science.What you get, in fact, is a series of startingly frank anecdotes which describe Trivers' life from his own perspective. So there is some interesting description of the development of his scientific ideas, but even more drug taking, womanising, violence, and a fair dose of mental illness. Life in Jamaica, particularly its seedier side, features strongly.One striking thing is just how thorough-going is his vision of human beings as products of their genes. He is, perhaps, the arch proponent of the 'selfish gene', and an extreme determinist in the way he sees every aspect of our behaviour as explicable in terms of our DNA. It results in some disorienting perspectives; he describes the legendary Professor Ernst Mayr as having, "perhaps the strongest phenotype of any organism I have ever met". Of his children and grandchildren, he says, "I get a special pleasure from my children from shared jokes, shared ways of viewing things...[which] I think results from genetic similarity at the relevant loci...I can no longer see the same pattern in my grandchildren, now having only a quarter chance of sharing the same genes."This disconcerting effect applies throughout the book. It results in insights which are undeniably powerful, and sometimes brilliant - such as his theories of parent-child investment conflicts and sexual selection. Sometimes though, he seems to lose his critical faculties - as, for instance, in his casual application of the dubious concept of the 'meme', and his current research which apparently demonstrates that Jamaican sprinters owe their speed to their symmetrical knees. And sometimes he just sounds bonkers - as in his suggestion that the murder rate is higher in the tropics because decomposition rates of dead bodies are higher, and that people in tropical countries tend to put a higher value on dishonesty.Trivers' politics turn out to be equally inconsistent. He had a close relationship with Black Panther leader Huey Newton, and is violently opposed to racism and homophobia. He clearly loves women, yet was a regular user of Jamaican brothels. He hates the US Presidents who went to war in the Middle East, yet also lambasts the 'socialist' government of Jamaica and believes in God.All in all, this is a book that is difficult to categorise. Even now, I'm not sure whether I love it or hate it - or him. Towards the end of his book, "Deceit and Self Deception" (published in 2014), Trivers' himself admits that, as he has aged, ‘the standards regarding my own arguments...have dropped. I care less about appearing the fool, so I am willing to live with a higher ratio of foolish thought to true insight in my statements.’ So it is with "Wild Life" - a book that offers up a life both foolish and brilliant.

Very frank take from an outstanding evolutionary biologist.

This book is of interest for everybody for whom Robert Trivers is of interest. Great stories, interesting read it is!

Welcome to Robert Trivers' mind and life. A series of stories, reflections and morals, all within the framework of social evolution (his area of expertise) that should interest lay public and Trivers-like academics. One can't help but see some self-deception in all of this - the author's life and it's predicaments are not terribly wild. This said, the snippets are very amusing - strangely tainted (an over-abundance of "short" people) - sometimes naive - revealing of the psyche of one of the world's foremost authorities on social behavior.

Excellent condition