The Secret of Our Success

A different recent take on "where is X really located?" is The Secret of Our Success by Joseph Henrich, which argues that our useful intelligence is largely in our culture and our capacity to build it incrementally, rather than in our individual minds' capacities. He starts off with observations about well-educated, intelligent, capable people in possession of sophisticated technology starving or freezing to death when they were stranded in unfamiliar physical environments, in which other cultural groups could thrive. If Turner thinks that your constructed habitat is part of your body, Henrich thinks that your culture is part of your intelligence, and for a wide range of purposes, the most important part.

The Secret of Our Success on the co-evolution of humans and human culture. The Origins of Political Order: From Prehuman Times to the French Revolution on what are states, where do they come from, and how do they work? The Vital Question: Energy, Evolution, and the Origins of Complex Life is just what it says on the tin. The Strategy of Conflict is the original book on game theory which stands up pretty well. Consciousness and the Brain: Deciphering How the Brain Codes Our Thoughts on the modern science of what we know about what consciousness is.