UNIQUE: The New Science of Human Individuality

All people are different from each other. This fact seems so obvious that we rarely wonder why this is so. Why some are owls and some are larks, some like sweet things and some like bitter things, some like men and some like women, and some are cramped in the usual gender categories. Neuroscientist David Linden assessed the degree of human diversity by studying profiles on a dating site. There, it turned out, people were particularly eager to describe their characteristics, from hair color to food and sexual preferences to household habits to allergies. "Why People Are Different" is an attempt to describe all facets of our uniqueness at once. Linden talks about genetic variability and environmental influences, from womb to adulthood, about learning and individual experiences, about immunity and chemical receptors that make there really are no mates for taste or color. Even though you have never doubted your own uniqueness before, you will still be fascinated to learn how difficult and unpredictable the path you had to take for her.