Dear friends, I would like to share the 8 suggestions I received from the list !!! But.... I am wating more!!! There is a book by Chris Stringer and Peter Andrews called 'The complete world of human Evolution'. This was a good core book for the human Evolution module I took for my degree. It has a very recent edition and gives all the basics. For more detail its reference list can be checked out. I'm not an expert in human evolution, but this is a very interesting topic and I have some documents about it. There is a book entittled "Human Evolutionary Genetics" that is very comprehensive, and it's written in a very easy-to-understand but professional manner. The amazon link is; http://www.amazon.com/Human-Evolutionary-Genetics-Matthew-Hurles/dp/0815341857/sr=8-1/qid66616417/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1/002-3050681-3447265?ie=UTF8&s=books If you're going to teach human evolution for a long time, I highly recommend that book (though it's a personal view, not professional). Moreover, there is an excellent recent review about Primate comparative genomics that, though not focused in human evolution, offered me a lot of interesting ideas and references. The PubMed link is that; http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?db=pubmed&cmd=Retrieve&dopt«stractPlus&list_uids485353&query_hl=1&itool=pubmed_docsum I could send you the PDF if you don't have access to it. That's all I can say, my research area is not human evolution itself so perhaps there exists a lot of good textbooks that I don't know. You may or may not be interested in this book, but I recently saw the author speak and found his book to be an excellent current overview of human evolution. It is not suitable as a textbook, but I think it would be a good source for constructing lectures from nothing. "Human evolution: a very short introduction", Bernard Wood http://www.amazon.co.uk/Human-Evolution-Short-Introduction-Introductions/dp/0192803603/sr-1/qid66615232/ref=sr_11_1/203-0310298-5115968. For a modern text, you could try: "The Origin of Species, Revisited" (McGill-Queens 2001) "Evolutionary Bioinformatics" (Springer 2006) You may find some useful pictures in evolution web-pages ( http://post.queensu.ca/~forsdyke/evolutio.htm) And, in all seriousness, for background reading you should read Samuel Butler's 1878 text "Life and Habit". Human Evolutionary Genetics: origins, people and disease. M Jobling, M Hurles and C Tyler-Smith Garland Science, 2004 It depends a bit on what exactly you want, but if you are interested in human evolution with special reference to disease susceptibility en genetics, I find "Human Evolutionary Genetics" from Jobling, Hurles and Tyler-Smith quite useful. There is a review from Rockman in Hum Genet. 2004 May 13. It does not, though, go into all other homonids. The human species (2006) by John H. Relethford. Ed McGrawHill (with online resources) level of difficulty: low How humans evolved (2003) by Robert Boyd and Joan B. Silk. Ed WW Norton&Company (with online resources) Physical Anthropology (2006) by Philip L. Stein and Bruce M. Roewe. Ed McGrawHill (with online resources) Introduction to Physical Anthropology (2003) (may be there is a newer one?) by Robert Jurmain, Lynn Kilhgore et al.. Ed Thomson Wadsworth (with online resources) all these three are of intermediate difficulty Reconstructin Human Origins. (2005) by Glenn C. Conroy. Ed WW Norton&Company. Human Evolutionary Genetics. Origins People and diseases. (2004) by MA Jobling, ME Hurles and C Tyler-Smith. Ed Garland Science These two are more advanced that's an excellent compilation of original texts: http://www.amazon.com/Human-Evolution-Source-Book-Advances/dp/0130329819 Voltolini Prof. Dr. J. C. VOLTOLINI Grupo de Estudos em Ecologia de Mamiferos (ECOMAM) Universidade de Taubate - Departamento de Biologia Taubate, SP. 12030-010. E-Mail: jcvoltol@uol.com.br Website do ECOMAM: http://jcvoltol.sites.uol.com.br/ Fotos de Cursos: http://jcvoltol.fotoblog.uol.com.br/ Currículo Lattes: http://lattes.cnpq.br/8137155809735635 Fotos Artísticas: http://voltolini.fotos.net.br/texturas jcvoltol@uol.com.br