Douglas S. Massey (Princeton University) is the author of many books including most recently Return of the “L” Word: A Liberal Vision of the New Century, Beyond Smoke and Mirrors: Mexican Immigration in an Age of Economic Integration, and Source of the River: The Social Origins of Freshmen at America’s Selective Colleges and Universities. His research focuses on international migration, race and housing, discrimination, education, urban poverty, and Latin America, especially Mexico. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and Past-President of the American Sociological Association and the Population Association of America.

Drawing from evolutionary biology, neuroscience, and sociology, this truly interdisciplinary study explores how the drive to find social connection has shaped the size, structure, and organization of human communities from the Stone Age to the post-industrial present.

Focusing on three central factors—the physical environment, social relations at the micro level, and social organization at the macro level—Professor Massey argues that humans are genetically programmed to be physiologically, psychologically, and socially adapted to life in small groups and to organic natural environments. Despite this, most humans live in dense urban environments. “As biological organisms,” Massey writes, “we are indeed strangers in a strange land.”