LAURA BETZIG studies despotism and democracy in history. She's looked at the cross cultural record, done fieldwork in Micronesia on Ifaluk and Yap, and read ancient, medieval, and modern history. She is the author of three books: Despotism and Differential Reproduction: A Darwinian View of History; Human Reproductive Behavior: A Darwinian Perspective; and Human Nature: A Critical Reader.
Betzig has taught at Northwestern, the University of California and the University of Michigan in anthropology, psychology and zoology; she's lectured across Europe and the US to anthropologists, biologists, economists, historians, philosophers, psychologists and sociologists; she's done TV for ABC World News, the Discovery Channel, the Learning Channel, Britain's Channel 4, the CBC and KRO Information TV in the Netherlands.