Develops a controversial alternative theory called social selection, which emphasizes cooperation, elucidates the factors that contribute to evolutionary success in a gene pool or animal social system, and demonstrates that to identify Darwinism with selfishness and individuality misrepresents the facts of life as we now know them.
"Roughgarden's unique and forceful vision issues a timely, cogent challenge to the predominant world view that selfishness and conflict are the norm in adaptive evolution."-Michael J. Wade, coauthor of Mating Systems and Strategies
"No other book offers such a sustained argument against sexual selection theory and provides such a compelling alternative-substantively important and exciting."-Jonathan Kaplan, coauthor of Making Sense of Evolution
"This may be the most important book, philosophically speaking, on evolutionary theory in a decade. If Roughgarden is right, males and females evolved as allies, not enemies, and evolutionary theory needs a rethink because competition evolves in a cooperative world, not the other way around."-James Griesemer, President of the International Society for the History, Philosophy, and Social Studies of Biology
"Argues that. . . . sexual selection as a form of self-seeking improvement on the part of each beast is a myth."
