Previous Books

Race, Genes and Ability: Rethinking Ethnic Differences. Volumes 1 & 2. 2011. BTI Press.
Volume 1

Volume 2

From the Back Cover

…. In a sweeping overview, Race, Genes, and Ability explores the current nature-nurture debate over the causes of ethnic differences in behavioral patterns. In scientifically informed but civil language, this data-driven work digs beneath the surface of political correctness to answer the “tough questions” about race—especially black/white/Asian variation in academic achievement, family structure, employment, economic success, crime rates, and even athletic advantage. The intriguing findings presented here will force us to rethink how we view “race”—and how we can realistically bridge the ethnic divide in the United States and beyond. There has never been a better time to sort fact from fiction about ideas of inborn racial differences. And in the process we can raise society’s scientific IQ about the powerful impact of the environment on shaping the intellect and social behaviors of individuals and ethnic populations.

Editorial Reviews

 “I highly recommend Race, Genes and Ability. This book is refreshingly comprehensive, dealing with various perspectives and new research that illuminates the nature-nurture debate.  I found it extremely educational…. Written in accessible language for both scholarly and lay audiences, Alondra Oubre re-examines the evidence about the impact of genes and the environment on developmental biology and social behavior. Required reading for anyone interested in understanding the risks inherent in so-called racial science.”

– Alvin F. Poussaint, MD, Professor of Psychiatry, Harvard Medical School

“Dr. Oubré is an excellent writer who has carefully and studiously crafted a devastating argument against the race scientists in Race, Genes and Ability. She meets them on their terms, i.e. using established research and scientific data and explanations….She points out the inconclusiveness of so much of the research [in racial science] that is being done, the unscientific sampling methods used, and the arbitrariness of the interpretations given to DNA studies on small groups, especially those relating to cognition and behavior. She questions the leap to genetic causality of so many studies and the failure to recognize other causes of human behavior….By raising the issue of the differences between fixed genetic traits and developmental biology, she provides an avenue for comprehending the causes of human behavior that transcends and supersedes the nature/nurture dichotomy, one that reflects the more complex reality with which we must deal….I consider Dr. Oubré to be one of the hardest working, most diligent, and most intellectually vibrant scientists of our era….”

– Audrey Smedley, Ph.D., Professor of Anthropology, Emerita of Virginia Commonwealth University

“ ‘Race, Genes, and Ability: Rethinking Ethnic Differences’… integrates an impressive amount of up-to-date research that is not usually available to most persons.  It offers an objective interpretation of the debate over race and IQ while clearly showing that the position of the so- called “race-realists” is not realistic because of numerous incorrect facts and assumptions. 

– Leonard Lieberman, Ph.D., Professor of Anthropology, Central Michigan University

Customer Reviews

 “A Deeply Pleasurable Debunking”

“Fascinating. With oceanic calm, Oubre picks apart the claims of racial “scientists” and leaves them in pieces on the floor.

            Today, technicalities are the last refuge of the scoundrel. The racialists have learned a trick we also see in global warming deniers: Swath your falsehoods in the appearance of science and most people can’t attack them. But Oubre can. She investigates widely and deeply, covering topics from serotonin to “black super fitness” to psychopathology. It’s a remarkable journey.

            And though this is a work of true scholarship, it’s also a pleasure to read. Indeed, it has the kind of drama you see on 60 Minutes, as Oubre carefully describes one racialist thesis after another and you read on eagerly to see her expose it…Five stars. Easily.”

– Daniel McNeill. Author, The Face: A Natural History; Fuzzy Logic: The Revolutionary Computer Technology that Is Changing Our World

“The Adaptionist Yardstick: Rethinking the Social Implications of Sarich’s and Miele’s Fast-Track Micro-Evolution.” In: “Two Reviews of Vincent Sarich and Frank Miele’s book, Race: The Reality of Human Differences, published in Skeptic Magazine, 2005.  www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/05-02-18/

 “We initially received a very positive review of the book by Paul R. Gross, which we were hesitant to publish because of a perceived conflict of interest or biased reporting. But then, independently of Gross and uncommissioned by us, Alondra Oubré submitted a critical review of the book. Since Skeptic never backs down from controversial topics on the cutting edges of science—indeed we look for them—and since we have devoted two full issues of Skeptic to the topic of race, we thought it would be most appropriate to run these two reviews back to back. Both review authors are highly qualified biologists steeped in the scientific literature that stands behind the topic, and knowing both reviewers personally I can attest to the fact that they are both thoughtful and balanced commentators not prone to hyperbole.

– Michael Shermer, Ph.D., President, Skeptic Society

Instinct and Revelation: Reflections on the Origins of Numinous Perception. Gordon and Breach / Routledge. 1997

  • Series: The World Futures General Evolution Studies ; Vol. 10 (Book 10)
  • Hardcover: 320 pages
  • Publisher: Routledge; 1 edition (October 1, 19
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 9056995278
  • ISBN-13: 978-9056995270

https://www.amazon.com/Instinct-Revelation-Reflections-Perception-Evolution/dp/9056995278

From the Back Cover

Instinct and Revelation revolves around the hypothesis that ritual behavior and imaginative awareness in early hominids may have helped to spawn the evolution of the human brain and human consciousness. …This book breaks from tradition by discussing from a primarily anthropological perspective the origin of human consciousness within a philosophical framework that embraces precepts from human evolution, evolutionary psychology, the neurosciences, biocultural anthropology, and cultural symbolic anthropology.

Editorial Reviews

In Alondra Oubré’s provocative and learned synthesis, the twin lights of neuroscience and biological anthropology are for the first time jointly turned upon that most recondite and mysterious capacity of the mind— the sense of transcendental consciousness.

– Ellen Dissanayake, Author, Homo Aestheticus: Where Art Comes From and Why

In Instinct and Revelation, Dr. Oubré offers an evolutionary amount of how spiritual numinous thought provided an essential, but by no means the only, critical bridge between the ape-like mind and the modern human mind, and how the numinous mind may still play a part in solving problems our rational minds have….The principal contribution [of Instinct and Revelation]…is to force us to rethink the origins of the human mind in terms of an ongoing feedback loop between the brain as a neurophysiological organ and culture as a system of learned, symbolic acts…. – Frank Miele, Senior Editor, Skeptic Magazine

…Dr. Alondra Oubré writes from a truly interdisciplinary perspective on topics generally avoided in both social science and human biology, namely the future potentials as well as the origins of consciousness as both a social and biological reality….Oubré has also been investigating the present-day social and ethnic issues related to psychological anthropology and the study, cross-culturally, of what we term human intelligence. As a result of these latter activities, she has been particularly effective both theoretically and practically in suggesting improved pedagogical policy for American primary and secondary education.

– George De Vos, Professor Emeritus of Anthropology, University of California at Berkeley. Perspectives in Biology and Medicine. Spring 2000

Race, Genes and Ability: Rethinking Ethnic Differences. Volumes 1 & 2. 2011. BTI Press

Instinct and Revelation: Reflections on the Origins of Numinous Perception. Gordon and Breach / Routledge. 1997

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