University Libraries Promotion and Tenure Recognition

For many decades, debate raged on whether complex human behaviors such as reading, cognitive ability, or mental health were influenced primarily by genetic or environmental influences. In recent years, this debate has begun to resolve with the realization that both genes and environments are important to understanding human behavior. This realization has opened up an even challenge--How.

Answering the "how" of genetic and environmental influences requires the combined interdisciplinary expertise of psychologists, geneticists, molecular biologists, and statisticians. In choosing a book, I wanted to find a book that provided a sense of this interdisciplinary endeavor, but also recognized the history of the once very controversial ideas we accept as valid today. This book was Fuller & Thompson's, Behavior Genetics.