The Mind

July 1, 2011

This engaging collection comes from the online science salon Edge.org, where editor Brockman's (This Will Change Everything: Ideas That Will Shape the Future) 18 interviews with 16 scientists originally appeared. Interviewees include Steven Pinker, V.S. Ramachandran, Alison Gopnik, Philip Zimbardo, Frank Sulloway, and George Lakoff; their respective topics are computation, mirror neurons and self-awareness, infants, cruelty and evil, birth order and personality, and philosophy. The style is conversational, lively, and informal. Especially interesting are Gopnik's amazing babies, Lakoff's linguistics, Joseph LeDoux's discussion of emotion, Geoffrey Miller on sexual selection (including how it can affect our art and music choices), and Jonathan Haidt's conversation on morality. Darwin is frequently cited, Freud hardly ever. Interview dates range from 1997 to 2009, with only four from the last five years. The editor ignores the amount of time that has elapsed since the interviews took place, e.g., the decade-old contribution on mirror neurons asserts that the subject is "unreported." Missing from the book, among others, are Antonio Damasio, Judith Rich Harris, and Eric Kandel. VERDICT A lively and useful but somewhat dated introduction to diverse aspects of brain and behavior research, accessible to a general audience.--E. James Lieberman, George Washington Univ. Sch. of Medicine, Washington, DC

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