Third Chimpanzee, The

“Wonderful....JaredDiamond conducts his fascinating study of our behavior and origins with anaturalist’s eye and a philosopher’s cunning.” —DianeAckerman, author of A Natural History of the SensesIn this fascinating, provocative,passionate, funny, endlessly entertaining work, renowned Pulitzer Prize–winningauthor and scientist Jared Diamond, author of Gun, Germs, and Steel, explores how the extraordinary human animal,in a remarkably short time, developed the capacity to rule the world . . . andthe means to irrevocably destroy it.We human beings share 98 percentof our genes with chimpanzees. Yet humans are the dominant species on theplanet—having founded civilizations and religions, developed intricate anddiverse forms of communication, learned science, built cities, and createdbreathtaking works of art—while chimps remain animals concerned primarilywith the basic necessities of survival. What is it about that two percentdifference in DNA that has created such a divergence between evolutionarycousins? The Third Chimpanzee is a tour de force, an iconoclastic, compelling, sometimes alarming look at the unique and marvelous creature that is the human animal.