Selected

Mark van Vugt is professor of psychology at the VU University of Amsterdam and holds honorary positions at the Universities of Oxford and Kent in the UK. Anjana Ahuja is a feature writer with a weekly science column in The Times, where she first introduced Mark's work to a wider audience, and holds a PhD in space physics.

There are few concepts as widely discussed but as little understood as leadership. By taking us back to the deepest historical and physiological foundations of our desire to lead and our willingness to follow, Selected makes an important contribution to addressing this deficit. It is a fascinating and eminently readable book, full of information you will want to share and arguments you will want to debate. As the authors show, much of human behaviour is explained by the fact that we are using prehistoric brains to navigate a modern world. By revealing the evolutionary foundation of leadership ,Selected helps us understand why we have the assumptions we do and encourages us to think again about the best ways to lead. Matthew Taylor, Chief Executive, RSA This is a really novel book on one of the most important human topics of our time, leadership. It is well written, innovative and fun! Professor Cary L Cooper, CBE, Lancaster University Management School For all our modern technology, in many ways we still use Pleistocene brains. Leadership is an example of a human trait that owes much to our distant evolutionary past, rather than our technological present. Mark van Vugt and Anjana Ahuja have written an intriguing and subtle account of the clash that results when old instincts meet new conditions. -- Matt Ridley, author of The Rational Optimist