Third Chimpanzee

Jared Diamond's The Rise and Fall of the Third Chimpanzee is a wonderful book, throws excellent light on many aspects of human life that most of us either don't understand or take for granted: who would guess that the ability to speak and formulate a language would make the humans the conquerors of all continents despite their obvious weaknesses against the nature and beasts?

The book covers a lot of interesting topics: evolution of homo sapiens, spread of humans outside Africa into Europe and far away lands, how and why languages and art came into existence, destructive abilities of humans causing extermination of not only other species and nature but of its own tribe. It has quite a few interesting tidbits on quirky habits of many animals, such as the art displayed by the bowerbird in building its nest to attract mates, and many extinct species of birds, mammals and other animals who would have been fantastic to look at today.

It finally makes a very poignant point about why we should all be worried about conservation and that we haven't lost it all if we decide to act now.