The Trouble with Testosterone
Sapolsky’s 1997 essay collection (Scribner, 288pp), subtitled And Other Essays on the Biology of the Human Predicament. A Pulitzer finalist in its year and the book that established his register: primate fieldwork and endocrinology written as essays about people.
Named essays include “Curious George’s Pharmacy” (self-medication in wild primates), “Junk Food Monkeys” (baboons at a tourist rubbish dump), “Poverty’s Remains,” “Measures of Life,” and “Circling the Blanket for God” (science and religion arising “from the same place: the human brain”).
Why it’s here
It’s the early statement of the position determined takes to its conclusion twenty-six years later. The collection’s premise is that behaviour has biological causes worth taking seriously and that doing so doesn’t cheapen the behaviour — the same argument, before it hardened into a claim about free-will.
The title essay is the widely-cited one, and the reason its reputation matters: the popular story is that testosterone causes aggression, and Sapolsky’s essay is generally read as arguing the relationship is far weaker and more social than that — testosterone amplifying existing behavioural patterns rather than creating them. This page cannot source that claim. The listing carries no detail on the title essay’s argument, so it is recorded as what the book is known for and not as something the wiki has evidence for.
Tier
T4 — a Google Books catalogue entry: title, author, publisher, page count and a jacket-level description. The weakest source in this spoke. It establishes that the book exists and what it covers, and nothing about what it argues. Anyone leaning on the testosterone claim should read the essay.