Human Diversity: Exploring the Intersection of Gender, Race, and Class Through Biology

Stephen Lawson: What an eye opener! I highly recommend the book. It has lots of recent data that will probably surprise you.

Australia on Jun 26, 2023

Batman: The book is well structured and presents studies on human genetics and intelligence. Was a good read.

Germany on Mar 25, 2023

mauro: ho trovato il libro veramente interessante, senza entrare in dettagli dico che andrebbe letto da chi sostiene le teorie gender più estreme tanto di moda oggi

Italy on Mar 22, 2022

John S: Murray has written a very readable introduction to the current state of knowledge regarding biological differences between the sexes, races and classes. He quite conclusively knocks out the foundations of the orthodox liberal position that almost all such differences are social constructs.
There is a vast trove of material here, far more than can be absorbed in a single reading. I plan on rereading the whole book slowly spending more time on each chapter and digging more deeply into the statistics.
I find it amazing and sad that this book has essentially been ignored by the mainstream media. If the arguments in this book hold up, and there seems no reason to suspect they won’t, they explain the background to most of the pressing social issues of the day. Without this background it is hard to see how we can find any effective solutions.
I recommend this book unhesitatingly to anyone who both has an open mind and a concern for the health of our communities.

There is a long somewhat polemical review below that purports to demolish Murray’s arguments, however the review ignores Murray’s attempts to deal with these arguments. One very basic point, the review...

United Kingdom on Jun 29, 2021

D_S: Murray has written a very valuable, concise book on the most exciting developments in human sociobiology. Most impressively, he has done so in a way that 1) uses several statistical concepts and 2) is readable for a non-STEM/stats graduate like myself. Despite the numerous media calumnies that make him out to be a Nazi, Murray writes in a very empathetic and positive manner. Women, non-whites, and working-class people are not talked down to or demeaned. His chapters on gender differences especially highlight the absurdity of claiming any group to be innately better than another.

Murray has put together the evidence suggesting biological/genetic explanations for certain differences between genders, races, and classes. The first and third have the most comprehensive/consistent evidence behind them, while the second is more rooted in speculation. But even on race, the sequencing of human genomes has shown a great deal of genetic influence on non-behavioural traits. If the taboo weakens, as Murray predicts, we might one day find that some cognitive differences can also be detected with genomic research methods. I am personally skeptical of this- if anything, the consensus that...

United Kingdom on Mar 02, 2021

Michael Jackson: Social constructionism holds that race and gender are shaped more by social forces and less by biological facts than people commonly realize. Charles Murray believes that this view has become an unscientific “orthodoxy,” and he offers a biological perspective that he believes can dispel much of this fuzzy thinking. It turns out that Murray’s biological perspective also rests on a great deal of fuzziness, though frequently concealed. In fairness to Murray, the genomic and psychometric research he surveys is difficult and technical. Murray recognizes this and provides several lengthy sections explaining this research clearly so that non-specialists can understand it. His success in doing so is probably the strongest feature of this book. The rest of the book, however, is more problematic. The issues are complex, and Murray does not always present the whole picture. Many readers will assume that Murray’s representations are accurate. Few will directly access the sources he cites, and fewer still will know how to evaluate the methods and findings of these sources, or the conclusions that Murray draws from them. In what follows, therefore, I will detail some significant...

United States on Mar 01, 2020

sciencedude: This is another top-notch book by Charles Murray, in which he reviews the current state of knowledge regarding the biology and genetics behind differences in sex, race, and class. Murray is neither a biologist nor a geneticist by training, yet his grasp of the subject is excellent. His IQ is obviously well to the right end of the bell curve. I found only one minor error in his science.* Murray compares the state of knowledge regarding sex, race, and class differences to archaeological digs in various states of progress. He describes the digs for both sex and class to be in fairly advanced stages, with many artifacts found and undergoing analysis. The archaeological dig on race is not so advanced, but initial analysis indicates there is more worth exploring. As Murray is well aware of his reputation, he attempts to minimize the implications of human genetic diversity by stating “there are no monsters in the closet, no dread doors we must fear opening.” It is hard to believe a man as intelligent as Charles Murray actually believes this. The current societal and social science orthodoxy is that all people are blank slates with precisely the same cognitive potentials at birth, and...

United States on Feb 23, 2020