Life on Earth has been defined by war from the beginning, with war between populations seen as an inevitable part of the evolutionary process. The popular understanding of ‘the survival of the fittest’ explains and often excuses these actions.

In Population Wars, Greg Graffin argues that this use of evolutionary theory is wrong, and that mistake has allowed us to justify wars even when other, less violent solutions may be available. Through tales of mass extinctions, developing immune systems, human warfare, the American industrial heartland, and our degrading modern environment, Graffin demonstrates how an over-simplified idea of war, with its victorious winners and vanquished losers, prevents us from responding to the real problems we face.

For readers of Richard Dawkins, Jared Diamond, and E.O. Wilson, Population Wars is a paradigm-shifting book about why humans behave the way they do and the science that explains their behaviour.