We cannot rid ourselves of Us-Them thinking. It is, literally, built into us. A membrane between Inside and Outside is essential for a living cell to function. Members Only is a biological and cultural anatomy of the reasons people need to bond together into a group; how they decide which of their many groups matter most; why they're nice to those within the group and nasty to those outside; what aspects of these impulses are part of human nature and which are learned. This is a book about ethnic massacres and race riots. But it is also a book about crowds of sports fans and the togetherness of a family picnic, and the deep longing people have to lose themselves in some greater organism - to become members of a team, a people, a church or a nation.
Author Biography
David Berreby was born in France in 1958.He graduated from Yale in 1981, and became Science Writing Fellow at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole, Massachusetts in 1995.His writing has appeared in a range of newspapers and journals, from The New York Times to The New Republic.
