Speaking as a relative newcomer, you guys can be somewhat intimidating to the average person. Most of the books you discuss, and the discussions themselves, are pretty deep and beyond the comfort level of the average reader. Most people will not put themselves into a discussion where they would feel stupid. The average reader does not have the background in philosophy, literature, theology, and political affairs to participate intelligently in many of the discussions on this forum - and let me repeat, no one likes to feel stupid.

Look at all the best-seller lists - if you want more people to join your discussions, discuss those books. And discuss them when they are still current, not 30 years after they were a best-seller.

Speaking as a relative newcomer, you guys can be somewhat intimidating to the average person. Most of the books you discuss, and the discussions themselves, are pretty deep and beyond the comfort level of the average reader. Most people will not put themselves into a discussion where they would feel stupid. The average reader does not have the background in philosophy, literature, theology, and political affairs to participate intelligently in many of the discussions on this forum - and let me repeat, no one likes to feel stupid.

Look at all the best-seller lists - if you want more people to join your discussions, discuss those books. And discuss them when they are still current, not 30 years after they were a best-seller.

One of the world's most celebrated scholars, Stephen Greenblatt has crafted both an innovative work of history and a thrilling story of discovery, in which one manuscript, plucked from a thousand years of neglect, changed the course of human thought and made possible the world as we know it.

Nearly six hundred years ago, a short, genial, cannily alert man in his late thirties took a very old manuscript off a library shelf, saw with excitement what he had discovered, and ordered that it be copied. That book was the last surviving manuscript of an ancient Roman philosophical epic, On the Nature of Things, by Lucretius-a beautiful poem of the most dangerous ideas: that the universe functioned without the aid of gods, that religious fear was damaging to human life, and that matter was made up of very small particles in eternal motion, colliding and swerving in new directions.

The copying and translation of this ancient book-the greatest discovery of the greatest book-hunter of his age-fueled the Renaissance, inspiring artists such as Botticelli and thinkers such as Giordano Bruno; shaped the thought of Galileo and Freud, Darwin and Einstein; and had a revolutionary influence on writers such as Montaigne and Shakespeare and even Thomas Jefferson.

Evolutionary Psychology: A Beginner's Guide
http://www.amazon.com/Evolutionary-Psyc ... 107&sr=8-2

. . . I thought this could be an interesting topic, it's a short, inexpensive book with good reviews. I was going to suggest Robert Wright's book on this topic, The Moral Animal, but I figure it was published 10 years earlier so this might be better.