How the Mind Works (SIGNED)

Pinker, Steven

ISBN 10: 0393045358 / ISBN 13: 9780393045352

Published by W. W. Norton, 1997

About this Item

Hardcover. First Edition, first printing. As new copy in like dust jacket, mylar protected. Signed by Author on title page. Event calendar laid in. Seller Inventory # 10653

Bibliographic Details

Title: How the Mind Works (SIGNED)

Publisher: W. W. Norton

Publication Date: 1997

Binding: Hardcover

Condition: As New

Dust Jacket Condition: As New

Signed: Signed by Author(s)

Edition: 1st Edition

About this title

Synopsis:

A prominent cognitive scientist and author of The Language Instinct explains how the brain evolved to store and use information, allowing our ancestors to control their environment, and why we think and act as we do. 50,000 first printing.

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.