How the Mind Works

About this book

Why do we laugh? What makes memories fade? Why do fools fall in love? Why do people believed in ghosts? How do we recognize a face? How the Mind Works explores every aspect of our brains, showing that our minds are not a mystery, but rather a system designed by natural selection over years of human evolution. Whether looking at optical illusions or religion, Mozart or films, Steven Pinker offers us a new way of understanding ourselves. 'Powerful and gripping . . . To have read it is to have consulted a first draft of the structural plan of the human psyche . . . a glittering tour de force.' Spectator 'Witty popular science that you enjoy reading for the writing as well as for the science . . . He is a top-rate writer, and deserve the superlatives that are lavished on him.' The New York Times 'Pinker has a remarkable capacity to explain difficult ideas and he writes with the comic verve of Martin Amis or Woody Allen . . . How the Mind Works will change the way your mind works.' The Times

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