How the Mind Works

Select a format:

Retailers:

Amazon Apple Books Google Play Hive Kobo

Summary

'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

Why do we laugh? What makes memories fade? Why do people believe in ghosts?

From the acclaimed author of Enlightenment Now and Better Angels of Our Nature, How the Mind Works explores every aspect of mental life, showing that our minds are not a mystery, but a system of organs of computation designed by natural selection.

'Pinker's objective in this erudite account is to explore the nature and history of the human mind ... He explores computations and evolutions, and then considers how the mind lets us "see, think, feel, interact, and pursue higher callings like art, religion and philosophy' Sunday Times

About the author

Steven Pinker

Steven Pinker is an experimental cognitive scientist. Currently Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, he has also taught at Stanford and MIT. He has won many prizes for his research, teaching, and his eleven books, including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Better Angels of Our Nature, and Enlightenment Now. He is a member of the National Academy of Sciences, a two-time Pulitzer Prize finalist, a Humanist of the Year, a recipient of nine honorary doctorates, one of Foreign Policy's 'World's Top 100 Public Intellectuals' and Time's '100 Most Influential People in the World Today'.

Learn More