Originally published: London : Bodley Head, 2017.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 721-773) and index.

Introduction -- The Behavior -- One second before -- Seconds to minutes before -- Hours to days before -- Days to months before -- Adolescence; or, Dude, where's my frontal cortex? -- Back to the crib, back to the womb -- Back to when you were just a fertilized egg -- Centuries to millennia before -- The Evolution of behavior -- Us versus them -- Hierarchy, obedience, and resistance -- Morality and doing the right thing, once you've figured out what that is -- Feeling someone's pain, understanding someone's pain, alleviating someone's pain -- Metaphors we kill by -- Biology, the criminal justice system, and (oh, why not?) free will -- War and peace -- Epilogue -- Appendix 1. Neuroscience 101 -- Appendix 2. The basics of endocrinology -- Appendix 3. Protein basics -- Glossary of abbreviations -- Notes

Why do we do what we do? 'Behave' achieves what no other text has previously attempted: it brings together a whole host of sciences - the study of our brains, genes and hormones, the investigations of psychology, anthropology and evolutionary history - and by gathering them together offers the richest and most accurate understanding yet of the causes of human behaviour. It shows that any explanation of why we behave the way we do is incomplete until we consider all of these factors together; when combined, the insights that emerge are unprecedented and astonishing.