The book inside is an even better book than the one the title promises... Bloom is a superb writer. His gift is in writing beautifully but plainly, and anticipating everything a reader will need to know in order to appreciate the point he will ultimately make...it was a great pleasure to read

Paul Bloom is among the deepest thinkers and clearest writers in the science of mind today. He has a knack for coming up with genuinely new insights about mental life...and making them seem second nature through vivid examples and lucid explanations

Bloom is a serious professional who knows his stuff

Thoughtful and entertaining

Bloom's book is different from the slew already out there about happiness. No advice here about how to become happier by organising your closets; Bloom is after something deeper than the mere stuff of feeling good

This book is not just a pleasure, but a revelation, by one of psychology's deepest thinkers and best writers. Lucid and fascinating, you'll want to read it slowly and savor the experience

Reading his book is like stargazing with your favorite cool professor while high

In this eloquent and provocative book, Paul Bloom takes us inside the paradoxes of pleasure, exploring everything from cannibalism to Picasso to IKEA furniture. The quirks of delight, it turns out, are a delightful way to learn about the human mind

Following the path of pleasure, Bloom leads us through a menagerie of human strangeness. By the end of the trip, the 'magic inside us' begins to make sense. This book is a pearl, a work of great beauty and value, built up around a simple truth: that we are essentialists, tuned in to unseen order

How Pleasure Works has one of the best discussions I've read of why art is pleasurable, why it matters to us, and why it moves us so

A fascinating, engaging and very well-written book.

Foer's book is great fun and hugely readable, not least because the author is a likeable sort of Everyman-science nerd whom we want to become a memory champion. Always fascinating and frequently mind-boggling, Moonwalking with Einstein is a book worth remembering.

In the most entertaining science book of the year, Foer describes how, though claiming to have an average memory, he became America's Memory Champion after just 12 months in training. The best way to recall an array of disparate objects is to place each object within some bizarre visual narrative. The more bizarre the better, hence the title of the book. Foer's personal story frames a history of memory from early hunters needing to find the way home to modern-day investigations (still very much in their infancy) of memory's neural workings

Kahneman provides a detailed, yet accessible, description of the psychological mechanisms involved in making decisions

This book is one of the few that must be counted as mandatory reading for anyone interested in the Internet, even though it doesn't claim to be about that. Before computer networking got cheap and ubiquitous, the sheer inefficiency of communication dampened the effects of the quirks of human psychology on macro scale events. No more. We must now confront how we really are in order to make sense of our world and not screw it up. Daniel Kahneman has discovered a path to make it possible

For anyone interested in economics, cognitive science, psychology, and, in short, human behavior, this is the book of the year. Before Malcolm Gladwell and Freakonomics, there was Daniel Kahneman who invented the field of behavior economics, won a Nobel...and now explains how we think and make choices. Here's an easy choice: read this

I will never think about thinking quite the same. [Thinking, Fast and Slow] is a monumental achievement

A terrific unpicking of human rationality and irrationality - could hardly have been published at a better moment. Kahnemann is the godfather of behavioural economics, and this distillation of a lifetime's thinking about why we make bad decisions - about everything from money to love - is full of brilliant anecdote and wisdom. It is Kahnemann's belief that anyone who thinks they know exactly what is going on hasn't understood the question; as such it's the perfect gift for opinionated family members everywhere.

The book I most want to be given is Thinking, Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. I'm a speedy thinker myself, so am hoping to be endorsed in that practice.

In this comprehensive presentation of a life's work, the world's most influential psychologist demonstrates that irrationality is in our bones, and we are not necessarily the worse for it

Selected by the New York Times as one of the 100 Notable Books of 2011

Wonderfully rich and insightful

A brilliant read

Essays true to psychoanalytic principles, but free from jargon; they have the quality of the best short stories.

Grosz is able to expand out creating universal themes and experiences that makes every chapter personally relevant to the reader. It is a fascinating process that challenges you to reflect honestly about your own experiences… Indeed this is both the perfect book for someone with no psychology background or someone who works in the area… I found this book extremely interesting… I would highly recommend to anyone wanting an interesting and fascinating social science read and it is a book you’ll remember long after reading.

Grosz’s vignettes are so brilliantly put together that they read like pieces of bare, illuminating fiction. . . utterly captivating

Marvellous… After reading [Grosz’s] absorbing accounts of his patients’ journeys you might feel that The Examined Life ought to be given out free at birth

Crystal-clear and completely magical…The Examined Life is a book full of troubles, but also of wonders

Engaging, frank, and with many penetrating insights. His short, succinct chapters have both the tension and the satisfaction of miniature detective or mystery stories

By turns edifying and moving…Grosz offers astute insights into the perplexities of everyday life

[Grosz's accounts] are shaped like short stories, but true and moving in ways that fiction cannot be […] distilled through long examination into finely crafted literary form…

Grosz’s message is always affirming…it is possible to change

Excellent… Every one of these case histories bears repeating. All offer worthwhile insights

Intelligent, human and deeply moving

'Grosz] writes lucidly and with sensitivity… sprinkled with wise reflections… A gem… highly recommended

[A] fine and moving book… It is a true literary work and a very modern one…

That rarest of pleasures: a book I loved, and could recommend to almost anyone

Enlightening…full of wisdom and insight

Beautifully unadorned writing... He paints a vivid portrait of his patients

A rare insight into the life of the psychoanalyst… succeeds in making complex behavioural issues accessible for any reader

Exquisitely written casebook

The suspense in each chapter is so expert that I had to double check that this wasn’t a work of fiction. Best of all, Grosz manages to give a jargon-free account of how psychoanalysis works

By turns edifying and moving… Grosz offers astute insights into the perplexities of everyday life

Grosz's vignettes are so brilliantly put together that they read like pieces of bare illuminating fiction... It is this combination of tenacious detective work, remarkable compassion and sheer, unending curiosity for the oddities of the human heart that makes these stories utterly captivating.

Brilliant…. Grosz is a superb writer, yes, but it is the stories his patients tell him that really make you marvel. An elegant, jargon-free expedition into the secret business of our minds written with such wisdom and kindness… After reading [Grosz’s] absorbing accounts of his patients’ journeys you might feel that The Examined Life out to be given out free at birth

A fine and moving book... The tact, patience and understatement, which are particular components of Grosz’s wisdom, remind the reader that this writer’s insights and empathy result from thousand of hours with patients. This book is not polemical literature… nor is it an academic work or a popular self-help book. It is a true literary work and a very modern one.

Crystal-clear and completely magical...The Examined Life is a book full of troubles, but also of wonders: it shows people trapped by their own mysterious impulses, searching for an escape hatch, and often finding it

Five star review - an intelligent, human and deeply moving book… Grosz is listening for the unspoken and the gaps in between. His book celebrates change and the triumphs and tragedies of humanity

Excellent… this book arrives like a box of chocolates. Thirty-one elegantly presented chapters which, when you bite into them, each reveals something sweet, rich or crunchy. Every one of these case histories bears repeating. All offer worthwhile insights.

Engaging, frank, and with many penetrating insights. His short, succinct chapters have both the tension and the satisfaction of miniature detective or mystery stories… A stimulating book.

Grosz writes lucidly and with sensitivity, treating his patients with respect. The cases are sprinkled with wise reflections... highly recommended

There are many sage lessons here, backed up by research where necessary…fascinating… Grosz writes lucidly and with sensitivity, treating his patients with respect. The cases are sprinkled with wise reflections…highly recommended

Intensely readable… As a reminder of the strangeness of human existence, the myriad ways we find of making ourselves unhappy and the perplexing resourcefulness of the unconscious mind, Grosz’s book is a worthwhile addition to the literature of the examined life.

Written with real elegance and a strong sense of structure… several chapters read like powerful short stories

Elegantly structured and written… Grosz’s book is intensely readable

Shaped like short stories, but true and moving in ways that fiction cannot be... Gradually accumulating through his book, Grosz provides, not a definition, but an enactment of the purpose of psychoanalysis, which is both modest and profound.

Grosz is an able writer, engaging, frank and with many penetrating insights. His short, succinct chapters have both the tension and the satisfaction of miniature detective or mystery stories… a stimulating book

[These] interpretations make fascinating reading, leave you marvelling at the ingenuity of the human subconscious. Grosz’s message is always affirming: if a person can work out what it is that’s driving them, it is possible to change

Grosz’s narrative is by turns edifying and moving...tempered by his engaging prose and moments of humour

I couldn't put this down—I read about other people, but learned about myself at the same time. Real stories can be so much more fascinating than fictional ones, especially with Stephen Grosz. No preaching, no clichés—just wisdom.

Modest and profound