I liked:
The Third Chimpanzee by Jared Diamond It discusses early (prehistoric) human
evolution, and gives a nice sense of the break between biological (Darwinian)
evolution and social (super-Lamarkian) evolution.
The Blind Watchmaker by Richard Dawkins It's pretty good for refuting
creationists and "intelligent design" pseudoscience. But it really lacks
good discussion of memetics and social evolution.
Timescale by Nigel Caulder Great book on the evolution of life from the
big bang to present.
Guns, Germs and Steel by Jared Diamond It discusses recent human
history from 20,000 years ago to the present. Nothing on memetics
and not much on biological evolution, if focusses mostly on the
interaction of human groups with the native flora and fauna that
surrounded them in prehistoric times, and how that influenced the
course of history.
Virus X by Frank Ryan A good book with an interesting theory about how
viruses (the biological type, not the mind type) might have influenced
mammalian evolution.
Complexity : Life at the Edge of Chaos by Roger Lewin Discusses the founding
of the Santa Fe Institute and the ideas of the people who pioneered studies
of self organizing systems, chaos theory, cellular automata, artificial life, etc...
In my opinion, these areas are the "bridge" between biological evolution and
social evolution. While biological evolution is mostly Darwinian, and scial
evolution is mostly Lamarkian (I call it super-Lamarkian), perhaps it will turn
out that some of the rules that govern self-organizing systems and chaos will
apply to both?
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