Of Societies and Men
by .Norton, $4.50.
A distinguished scientist considers the ways of the ant and other social insects, with fifty or more million years of history to their credit, to see what can be learned about the social evolution of that million-year-old parvenu, modern man. What he comes up with is the cheering news that totalitarianism, on biological grounds, has less prospect of surviving than democracy. Meanwhile he draws some provocative parallels between the social evolution of many different kinds of organism, and he gives a fascinating close-up of behavior in the insect world.