How the Mind Works - Softcover

Pinker, Steven

3.99

20,414 ratings by Goodreads

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0713991305 ISBN 13: 9780713991307

Publisher: Allen Lane, 1998

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Why do memories fade? Why does makeup change the look of a face? When are racial stereotypes irrational? Why do people lose their tempers? What makes children bratty? Why do fools fall in love? What makes us laugh? And why do people believe in ghosts and spirits? In HOW THE MIND WORKS, Steven Pinker explains what the mind is, where it came from, how it lets us see, think, feel, interact, and pursue higher callings such as art, religion and philosophy, as well as shedding revealing light on distinctively human quirks along the way.

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Review:

Why do fools fall in love? Why does a man's annual salary, on average, increase $600 with each inch of his height? When a crack dealer guns down a rival, how is he just like Alexander Hamilton, whose face is on the ten-dollar bill? How do optical illusions function as windows on the human soul? Cheerful, cheeky, occasionally outrageous MIT psychologist Steven Pinker answers all of the above and more in his marvellously fun, awesomely informative survey of modern brain science. Pinker argues that a combination of Darwin's theories and some canny computer programs are the key to understanding ourselves--but he also throws in apt references to Star Trek, Star Wars, The Far Side, history, literature, W.C. Fields, Mozart, Marilyn Monroe, surrealism, experimental psychology and Moulay Ismail the Bloodthirsty and his 888 children. If How the Mind Works were a rock show, tickets would be scalped for $100. This book deserved its spot at the top of the bestseller lists. It belongs on a short shelf alongside such classics as Darwin's Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, by Daniel C. Dennett, and The Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary Psychology, by Robert Wright. Pinker's startling ideas pop out as dramatically as those hidden pictures in a Magic Eye 3D stereogram poster, which he also explains in brilliantly lucid prose.

Review:

Undeniably brilliant.

Big, brash, and a lot of fun.

It alters completely the way one thinks about thinking, and its unforeseen consequences probably can't be contained by a book. --Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

Pinker has a knack for making the profound seem obvious.... A fascinating bag of evolutionary insights.

Undeniably brilliant. "

Big, brash, and a lot of fun. "

Hugely entertaining . . . always sparkling and provoking.

Hugely entertaining...always sparkling and provoking.

Witty popular science that you enjoy reading for the writing as well as for the science. No other science writer makes me laugh so much.--Mark Ridley

Alters completely the way one thinks about thinking...its unforeseen consequences probably can't be contained by a book.--Christopher Lehmann-Haupt

Pinker has a knack for making the profound seem obvious....A fascinating bag of evolutionary insights.

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