The Ten Types of Human

What makes a human being capable of looking at a child starving and walking past — and what makes another person risk their life to save a stranger? Dexter Dias QC has spent twenty years in the world’s most extreme courtrooms: defending child soldiers, prosecuting war criminals, bearing witness to the very limits of human behaviour. This book is what he found there.

Drawing on evolutionary biology, neuroscience, psychology, and his own extraordinary legal career, The Ten Types of Human identifies ten fundamental patterns of response that together map the range of what human beings are capable of. This is not an abstract academic exercise: it is a deeply personal investigation, written with the urgency of someone who has genuinely needed the answers it contains.

Moving between the courtrooms of international justice, the evolutionary past, and the cutting edge of brain science, Dias builds a portrait of our species that is simultaneously humbling and galvanising — a reminder of what we are, what we can be, and why understanding the difference matters more than ever. One of the most ambitious and important works of popular non-fiction published in recent years. Published by Vintage.