For a lay reader looking for an introduction to ev-psych, I advise against Wright's "The Moral Animal", suggested in Eliezer's first comment. It's been several years since I read it, but I remember it being boring, unenlightening, and bogged down with biographical vignettes of Charles Darwin. It might be a good intro for people who enjoy history and literature more than science texts, but this is pure speculation--I know few of these people and rarely give them books. If you want a light intro without the fluff, I'd suggest "Evolutionary Psychology: An Introduction" by Workman and Reader, a completely nontechnical textbook that actually spends more time explaining ev-psych than trying to convince the reader it's not an evil, misogynistic pseudoscience. It's the sort of text high-school (or even middle-school) teachers would use in a parallel universe where "evolutionary psychology" has a redundant adjective.
For a lay reader looking for an introduction to ev-psych, I advise against Wright's "The Moral Animal", suggested in Eliezer's first comment. It's been several years since I read it, but I remember it being boring, unenlightening, and bogged down with biographical vignettes of Charles Darwin. It might be a good intro for people who enjoy history and literature more than science texts, but this is pure speculation--I know few of these people and rarely give them books. If you want a light intro without the fluff, I'd suggest "Evolutionary Psychology: An Introduction" by Workman and Reader, a completely nontechnical textbook that actually spends more time explaining ev-psych than trying to convince the reader it's not an evil, misogynistic pseudoscience. It's the sort of text high-school (or even middle-school) teachers would use in a parallel universe where "evolutionary psychology" has a redundant adjective.