The Social Animal - Softcover

‘W. G. Runciman is something of a phenomenon... [The Social Animal] is always good and at times brilliant. On every page there is something to stimulate, engross or madden the reader, and for once, the reviewer’s cliche
“continuously absorbing”, expresses the truth.’
Frank McLynn, Literary Review

The Social Animal is a classic investigation of human beings as social animals.

The Social Animal is the acclaimed book that sets out the present extent of our knowledge about how human societies and institutions really work, and what motivates the people who live within them.

W. G. Runciman’s short, wide-ranging, witty and accessible book is a welcome corrective to the view that there are no societies, only collections of individuals and their families: he shows that wherever they may live in the world, human beings are quintessentially social animals.

Using the latest insights from the fields of biology, anthropology, psychology, economic history and sociology, Runciman proposes a new social science, based not upon outmoded marxist ideas, but on the insights of Charles Darwin.

It is, in short, an instant classic.