Born to Rebel ranked
number 35 on Amazon.com's list of best-selling books for 1996 and was also
picked as a Notable Book of the Year by The
New York Times.
Synopsis: Why are
individuals from the same family often no more similar in personality than
those from different families? Why, within the same family, do some children
conform to authority, whereas others rebel? The family, it turns out, is not a
"shared environment" but rather a set of niches that provide siblings
with different outlooks.
At
the heart of this pioneering inquiry into human development is a fundamental
insight: that the personalities of siblings vary because they adopt different
strategies in the universal quest for parental favor. Frank J. Sulloway's most
important finding is that eldest children identify with parents and authority,
and support for the status quo, whereas younger children rebel against it. Drawing
on the work of Darwin
and the new science of evolutionary psychology, he transforms our understanding
of personality development and its origins in the family.
Most
persuasively, Sulloway's findings offer conclusive evidence that the family,
with its powerful interpersonal dynamics, is a cauldron for the great
revolutionary advances that drive historical change. Through his analysis of revolutions in
science and social thought, from the Reformation to Darwin's theory of natural selection,
Sulloway demonstrates that the primary engine of history is located within families, notbetween them, as Marx believed.
This
landmark work illuminates the crucial influence that family niches have on
personality, and documents the profound consequences of sibling
competition--not only on individual development within the family, but on
society as a whole. Born to
Rebel's pathbreaking insights promise to revolutionize the nature of
psychological, sociological, and historical inquiry.
Comments about Born to
Rebel:
"Sulloway
has delivered one of the most authoritative and important treatises in the
history of the social sciences." --Edward O. Wilson,
Harvard University, Pulitzer Prize-winning
author of On Human Nature
"Every
once in a long while a book is published which changes a whole field of
scholarship, perhaps even everybody's thinking. Such a book is Born to Rebel." --Ernst
Mayr, Agassiz Professor of Zoology Emeritus, Harvard University
"Sulloway's
book will change the way each of us thinks about the past, the future, and
ourselves. I believe this book will have the same kind of long-term impacts as
Freud's and Darwin's." --Sarah Blaffer Hrdy, author of Mother Natureand The Woman That Never Evolved
"Born
to Rebel is a masterpiece,
extraordinary to the highest degree. It develops its subject matter in an
original and incredibly arresting manner, and it flows with the excitement of a
good novel. I believe it is the first book which really uses Darwinian
evolution to produce a new way of doing history successfully." --I.
Bernard Cohen, Harvard
University, Victor S.
Thomas Professor of the History of Science, Emeritus
"A
quarter century in the making, this brilliant, searching, provocative, and
readable treatise promises to remain definitive for at least as long. Whether
firstborns or laterborns, all of us will learn fascinating and surprising
details about ourselves." --Robert K. Merton, Columbia University,
University Professor Emeritus
"Born
to Rebel is a magnificent
intellectual accomplishment, at once sweeping and intimate; it affords a whole
new perspective on both human history and everyday life." --Robert
Wright, author of Nonzero and The
Moral Animal
Excerpts from Reviews of Born
to Rebel:
"This
book represents a stunning achievement." --Derek Bickerton, The New York Times Book Review
"Fascinating
and persuasive. . . . Birth order places children in different 'niches,'
requiring disparate modes of competition for maximal success. Sulloway's
substantial birth-order effects therefore provide our best and ultimate
documentation of nurture's power."--Stephen Jay Gould, Natural History, June 1997.
"An
extraordinary new study. . . . Sulloway's argument demolishes all simplistic
notions of nature and nurture." --Matt Ridley, The Times (London)
"Fascinating
and convincing." --Jared Diamond, The
New York
Review of Books
"Bertrand
Russel once stated that the power of a thinker's contribution lies less in the
uniqueness of his ideas, more in the skill with which the thinker defends his
vies against all possible criticism. Sulloway's approach is admirable in this
respect--and particularly so for a work that is primarily historical and
archival in nature. Throughout, he considers alternative explanations, produces
relevant data where he can, and suggests further studies that could resolve
paradoxes and contradictions. . . . Clearly, Sulloway intended to write a book
'in the grand tradition' and, by and large, he has succeeded in doing so."
--Howard Gardner, Nature
"Dr.
Sulloway has built a formidable case. . . . Forget Adam Smith's invisible hand,
Karl Marx's class struggles and Sigmund Freud's Oedipal clashes, he says. Radical
change in human affairs is wrought by the perennial rivalry between eldest
children and their younger siblings." --David, Stipp, Wall Street Journal
"Sulloway's
birth order theory shares the parsimonious elegance of the Darwinian principles
that were its inspiration. . . . Born
to Rebel [has] an
interpretive nuance rarely found in quantitative studies." --Robert
Boynton, The New Yorker
"An
important and valuable study that will define research agendas for years to
come. It is also hugely fun to read." --Chet Raymo, Boston
Globe
"Sulloway
has gone on to do what Darwin
did not do in Origin of
Species, which is to supplement the anecdotal material showing how birth
order can work with statistical demonstrations
that it does work. . . . I urge my colleagues who
have not yet done so to wake up to the seriousness and worth of this book and
its arguments and take a detailed look at its conclusions and its methods.--Mott
T. Greene, Isis