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 Worksexplores 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 Workswill change the way your mind works.' The Times