Any population is fair game for anthropological research, so why not the super-rich, super-thin and oh-so-well-dressed mothers of New York’s Upper East Side? That’s the reasoning of author Wednesday Martin, and she puts it to the test in Primates of Park Avenue, her account of six years as a wife and mother in Manhattan’s toniest neighborhood.

Sorry, make that Wednesday Martin, Ph.D.: Martin does have a doctorate in cultural studies. So she brings some gravitas to the project, and she’s not shy about rolling it out. But not to worry—there are plenty of laugh lines and arch observations as Martin surveys the scene of exclusive preschools, lavish fundraisers and second homes in the Hamptons. The result is illuminating and fun to read.

Martin is not exactly parachuting in from grad school at Berkeley, brushing granola crumbs off her work shirt. It’s obvious that her husband makes plenty of money, and they move from Greenwich Village to the East Side by choice (family reasons, you know). So in a way she fits in, and in a way she doesn’t, and that contributes to the book’s dynamics.

She pushes back, for example, against some of the tribe’s most established customs, such as signing infants up for nursery school (she “totally forgot” this step in the path to Harvard). But she also goes native, deciding that she absolutely must have a Hermès Birkin bag.  

Primates of Park Avenue isn’t all snide comments and wry asides. Martin experiences a personal tragedy, bringing her closer to the neighborhood’s team of rivals. And finally, a simple declaration: “We moved across town” to the West Side (family reasons again). Given Martin’s skills in observation, we can hope to look forward to Primates of Columbus Avenue.

This article was originally published in the June 2015 issue of BookPage. Download the entire issue for the Kindle or Nook.

In his engaging and provocative Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy, Emory University anthropologist and neuroscientist Konner (The Tangled Wing) admits that his book contains something to offend everyone. The idea that important differences in gender identity and behavior are based in biology will not please feminists, and the idea that women are superior to men will offend a lot of men, he writes.

Nevertheless, in his characteristically elegant way, Konner marches on, using the tools of genetic biology, evolutionary psychology and anthropology to demonstrate that “women are not equal to men; they are superior in many ways, and in most ways that will count in the future.” Konner opens his book with a discussion of genetics as a means of determining both identity and behavior in men and women. In some cases, as he illustrates, genes do explain the gender differences we have attributed to cultural influences; thus, he observes, nurture and culture, while powerful forces, are often not the most powerful in determining gender behavior.

Konner focuses on evolution as the engine driving the ways that gender roles and behavior might change in the future. If women steadily take charge of their genes—which he points out is already occurring in various biomedical technologies such as in-vitro fertilization—they can slowly begin to increase their numbers relative to men. By relying on this genetic technology, coupled with a return to rules of life that ruled humans as hunter-gatherers for 90 percent on human history—“women and men working at their jobs, sharing, taking care of children, their main link to the future”—Konner argues that our culture might have a chance at seeing real equality.

At the very least, Konner’s virtuoso performance will challenge us to examine the cultural stereotypes we so often use to foster the gender inequality that diminishes both women and men.

Annoyance can be a powerful prod to action. And so after being annoyed for years by the praise much of the world lavishes on the supposedly enlightened Scandinavians, British writer Michael Booth has bestirred himself to take a closer, more jaundiced look at the people, customs, institutions and landscapes of Sweden, Norway, Finland, Iceland and his adopted homeland of Denmark. Are these five nations the political incarnation of human happiness? Well, maybe.

In The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia, Booth brings a deliciously droll sense of humor to his mission. But he is no dilettante, no mere passer through. In striking a balance between Chamber of Commerce and chamber of horrors, he undergirds his personal observations by citing copious studies and statistics and interviewing a wide swath of sociologists, historians, politicians, journalists and common folk. Apart from a history of being tugged and battered by larger countries, the commonalties Booth finds among Scandinavians are hardiness and resourcefulness (no doubt enhanced by the unforgiving climate), social cohesiveness, devotion to economic and gender equality, respect for education (in Finland, he discovers, teachers are “national heroes”) and a secular approach to problem-solving.

And there are problems aplenty, both current and impending, Booth says. Social safety nets are expensive to maintain, particularly for aging populations, which portend even higher taxes and greater productivity. Security can and does lead to a certain level of individual indolence. Immigration, besides being socially disruptive, is giving rise to racist political parties in Denmark and Sweden, although the latter country strives mightily to welcome and integrate its newcomers. Norway’s vast oil wealth enables its citizens to maintain their smug, provincial ways. Iceland, while recovering from its recent financial disaster, still has remnants of the American-style capitalism that got it into trouble in the first place.

Even so, Booth emerges as a cautious cheerleader for the region. As societal and economic role models for the rest of the world, he declares, “The Nordic countries have the answer.”

If you've ever seen a story about food stamps or poverty and wondered how people end up there, you need to read Hand to Mouth: Living in Bootstrap America. Author Linda Tirado wrote a post about why the poor make such “terrible decisions,” it went viral, and she offers an expanded take on the subject here.

As more people fall through the “spongy divide” between just making it and too broke to function—and at last count that was roughly a third of the U.S. population—Tirado writes in the hope that we'll understand one another better. Specifically, she hopes those who use the services and reap the benefits of subsistence labor (and if you eat food, shop or pretty much ever leave the house, this is you) will acknowledge that it's necessary work, but grossly underpaid and routinely devalued.

Tirado's writing is gritty, profane and to the point. She nails the sense of exhaustion you feel while toggling between two or three jobs with little to no rest in sight, the staggering insult of being accused of meth use because lack of access to dentistry means your teeth fall apart over time, and the perpetual sense of hives-like itchiness that comes with wearing second-hand clothes. And she offers a succinct explanation for the situational depression that service workers often experience while trying to balance back-breaking labor with the soul-crushing imperative to be all things to all customers: “(W)e're trying to zombie out to survive.”

This is dark material, to be sure, but Tirado is fierce and funny in equal measure. Lest you think she's describing a phenomenon that doesn't touch you or anyone you know, the examples I chose for this review are ones I've also experienced firsthand. There are more of us living Hand to Mouth than you realize, and thankfully, we finally have a voice.

Multitasking at work through texts and emails, pumping breast milk for your baby, then grabbing a decaf latte solo as a treat afterward: Is this you? It turns out our collective drive for greater efficiency is leading to lower productivity, reduced immunity and general malaise. In The Village Effect: How Face-to-Face Contact Can Make Us Healthier, Happier, and Smarter, author Susan Pinker (The Sexual Paradox) shares research indicating that face time is the answer to many of our troubles.

When MIT researchers enabled workers to share a 15-minute coffee break, they were surprised: Productivity increased significantly, and the workers reported being happier on the job. This may have been because they could share strategies for dealing with difficult customers, but there's also a less-quantifiable benefit to face time. Breast milk is full of good things for babies, sure, but there's new thinking that one of the benefits of breastfeeding, beyond the contents of the milk, is the physical closeness between mother and child; this form of coddling tends to produce children who are paradoxically more willing to take risks. Similarly, there has yet to be a TV show or computer program that engages children with books the way having a parent read to them from a young age does; what seems like a simple interaction affects much more than you'd think.

Pinker's research takes her to “blue zones” in Sardinia and intentional communities in Northern California. She's thoughtful, humorous and thorough, allowing for the downsides of a trustworthy face (Bernie Madoff had one), while shoring up her argument that finding time to connect on a personal level is more than worth the effort. While The Village Effect is short on ideas to help the disconnected find community, it's nevertheless a thought-provoking introduction to an idea we'll surely be hearing more about.

The “triple package,” as the authors anatomize it, is a cluster of traits that enables groups, individuals and even nations to get ahead materially. Specifically, the three traits are: (1) an innate sense of superiority co-existing simultaneously with (2) feelings of situational insecurity and powered by (3) impulse control so that gains made through concentration, hard work and thrift are not dissipated by transitory urges and appetites.

This “recipe for success” hardly comes as a surprise to most of us. In fact, it seems little more than an update of Ben Franklin’s bootstrapping wisdom. But what the authors add to what we’ve already been told or surmised are study-supported insights into how these traits emerge, change and disappear within populations and what the consequences are.

It bears noting that Amy Chua and Jed Rubenfeld are married to each other, both law professors at Yale and both offspring of ethnic groups that have flourished by activating the triple package. Chua, whose parent were impoverished Chinese immigrants, set talk shows and op-ed pages buzzing in 2011 with her book Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother, in which she argued for a more rigorous and disciplined approach to educating children, offering her own kids as examples. Here, however, Chua and Rubenfeld forswear the first-person approach, electing instead to present more generalized evidence to undergird their conclusions.

In examining how Asians, Jews, Nigerians, Mormons, refugees from Cuba and other sub-groups have risen to the tops of their professions, it would have been easy to simply stereotype. But the authors point out repeatedly that triple-package virtues are not endemic to any particular race or religion nor embraced by all members. Rather, these qualities are inclined to blossom and wither according to external circumstances and tend to weaken or even vanish in succeeding generations. Moreover, they promote “success” only in a narrow, material sense. They don’t promise satisfaction or happiness.

The authors use their last chapter to argue that America has abandoned the triple package formula that once made it the envy of the world. And they blame a number of factors, from the lack of thrift to a mindless embracing of the self-esteem movement that teaches people, especially children, that they have a right to feel good about themselves without having achieved anything by their own efforts.  “With those . . . elements [of insecurity and impulse control] gone,” they lament, “what remained was superiority and the desire to live in the present—a formula not for drive, grit, and innovation, but for instant gratification.” Time will tell if they’re right.

According to author Rosemary Mahoney, “the United States has the lowest rate of blindness in the world,” yet Americans fear blindness more than any other handicap. As she concedes in her riveting glance into the world of the blind, she was among those who palpably feared a world of darkness.

Yet, in her compulsively readable account, For the Benefit of Those Who See: Dispatches from the World of the Blind, Mahoney reveals that the blind often embrace their affliction rather than wallowing in self-pity or searching for sympathy.

Mahoney (Down the Nile) travels to India to teach in a school for the blind run by Sabriye Tenberken, founder of Braille Without Borders. She admits that she chose the school because she had developed a strong curiosity about blindness and that “she wanted to meet blind people, to spend time with them, to get to know them . . . to see how they live in their world, and how they navigate.”

What she discovers is that the blind don’t let their sightlessness stand in the way of living their lives. Many of the students feel lucky to be blind, because, as they tell her, if “we were not blind, we would still be sitting in our countries only helping at home and doing nothing.” The blind individuals with whom she lives and works are “strong and happy and very capable . . . they’ve accepted their blindness; it can’t stand in their way.”

Mahoney’s beautifully written narrative opens our eyes to the experience of blindness and offers fresh insight into human resilience and the way we view the world.