Creatures of Cain: The Hunt for Human Nature in Cold War America

After World War II, the question of how to define a universal human nature took on new urgency. Creatures of Cain charts the rise and precipitous fall in Cold War America of a theory that attributed man’s evolutionary success to his unique capacity for murder. Erika Milam (History) and Miguel Centeno (Sociology) will debate Milam’s book, which argues that the legacy of the killer ape persists today in the conviction that science can resolve the essential dilemmas of human nature.