Human Diversity

In Human Diversity, Charles Murray examines what genetics and neuroscience reveal about differences among people. His starting point is that all people are equal in standing but that groups of people are not identical.

Murray argues that advances in these sciences are undermining an orthodoxy that has dominated the social sciences for decades. He says it rests on three dogmas: that gender is a social construct, that race is a social construct, and that class is simply a function of privilege. In his view each is only a half-truth, and together they have held back understanding of how biology shapes the social, political and economic worlds we live in.

He presents the subject as one that need not be feared, saying there is nothing alarming behind the door and that the story simply deserves to be told. The book draws on the most authoritative scientific findings and aims to avoid sensationalism, while acknowledging both our many differences and our common humanity.

Murray is an American political scientist who also wrote The Bell Curve and Coming Apart.