The Knowledge Illusion: Why We Never Think Alone

Surviving Survival: The Art and Science of Resilience

Laurence Gonzales · 272 pages

The Talent Code: Unlocking the Secret of Skill in Sports, Art, Music, Math, and Just About Everything Else

Daniel Coyle · 246 pages

What is the secret of talent? How do we unlock it? In this groundbreaking work, journalist and New York Times bestselling author Daniel Coyle provides parents, teachers, coaches, businesspeople--and everyone else--with tools they can use to maximize potential in themselves and others.Whether you're coaching soccer or teaching a child to play the piano, writing a novel or trying to improve your gol

Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise

K. Anders Ericsson · 307 pages

Draws on the examples of chess champions, violin virtuosos, star athletes, and memory mavens to outline a powerful approach to learning that enables proficiency through strategic goal setting, self-motivation, and feedback exercises.

The Unthinkable: Who Survives When Disaster Strikes - and Why

Amanda Ripley · 304 pages

Nine out of ten Americans live in places at significant risk of earthquakes, hurricanes, tornadoes, terrorism, or other disasters. Tomorrow, some of us will have to make split-second choices to save ourselves and our families. How will we react? What will it feel like? Will we be heroes or victims? Will our upbringing, our gender, our personality--anything we've ever learned, thought, or dreamed o

Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious

Gerd Gigerenzer · 288 pages

Stumbling on Happiness

Daniel Todd Gilbert · 310 pages

A smart and funny book by a prominent Harvard psychologist, which uses groundbreaking research and (often hilarious) anecdotes to show us why we're so lousy at predicting what will make us happy -- and what we can do about it.Most of us spend our lives steering ourselves toward the best of all possible futures, only to find that tomorrow rarely turns out as we had expected. Why? As Harvard psychol

Scream: Chilling Adventures in the Science of Fear

Margee Kerr · 281 pages

"For as long as we've gathered by campfires to tell ghost stories, humans have always loved a good scare. From the splatter flicks of the 70s, to Japan's obsession with drowned girls, to creepy modern experiences like the overnight ghost hunt at the Trans-Allegheny Lunatic Asylum, the horror industry has thrived across time and cultures. Our obsession with getting scared is obvious to anyone who v

Make It Stick: The Science of Successful Learning

Peter C. Brown, Henry L. Roediger III, Mark A. McDaniel · 336 pages

To most of us, learning something "the hard way" implies wasted time and effort. Good teaching, we believe, should be creatively tailored to the different learning styles of students and should use strategies that make learning easier. Make It Stick turns fashionable ideas like these on their head. Drawing on recent discoveries in cognitive psychology and other disciplines, the authors offer concr

Fooling Houdini: Magicians, Mentalists, Math Geeks, and the Hidden Powers of the Mind

Alex Stone · 310 pages

If Only Happiness Was a No-Brainer: The Neuroscience and Psychology Behind Emotions and Living Well

Yair Aizenman · 278 pages

Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can't Stop Talking

Susan Cain · 360 pages

Passionately argued, impressively researched, and filled with indelible stories of real people, Quiet shows how dramatically we undervalue introverts, and how much we lose in doing so. Taking the reader on a journey from Dale Carnegie's birthplace to Harvard Business School, from a Tony Robbins seminar to an evangelical megachurch, Susan Cain charts the rise of the Extrovert Ideal in the twentieth

Emotions Revealed: Recognizing Faces and Feelings to Improve Communication and Emotional Life

Paul Ekman · 289 pages

The Seven Sins of Memory: How the Mind Forgets and Remembers

Daniel L. Schacter · 279 pages

"Daniel L. Schacter, chairman of Harvard University's Psychology Department and a leading expert on memory, has developed the first framework that describes the basic memory miscues we all encounter. Just like the seven deadly sins, the seven memory sins appear routinely in everyday life. Schacter explains how transience reflects a weakening of memory over time, how absent-mindedness occurs when f

NurtureShock: New Thinking About Children

Po Bronson, Ashley Merryman · 352 pages

In a world of modern, involved, caring parents, why are so many kids aggressive and cruel?  Where is intelligence hidden in the brain, and why does that matter?  Why do cross-racial friendships decrease in schools that are more integrated?  If 98% of kids think lying is morally wrong, then why do 98% of kids lie?  What's the single most important thing that helps infants learn language?  NurtureSh

The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

Jonathan Haidt · 297 pages

Applies the latest findings in psychology and brain research to the wisdom of the ancients to define what makes people happy and how you can find more happiness in your life. Confirms and builds on the happiness formula defined by other psychologists: H=S+C+V or Happiness = your biological Setpoint + the Conditions of your life + the Voluntary activities you do

Why Don't Students Like School?: A Cognitive Scientist Answers Questions About How the Mind Works and What It Means for the Classroom

Daniel T. Willingham · 320 pages

Cognitive scientist Dan Willingham has focused his acclaimed research on the biological and cognitive basis of learning and has a deep understanding of the daily challenges faced by classroom teachers. This book will help teachers improve their practice by explaining how they and their students think and learn revealing the importance of story, emotion, memory, context, and routine in building kno

The Invisible Gorilla: And Other Ways Our Intuitions Deceive Us

Christopher Chabris, Daniel Simons · 306 pages

Why We Make Mistakes: How We Look Without Seeing, Forget Things in Seconds, and Are All Pretty Sure We Are Way Above Average

Joseph T. Hallinan · 269 pages

We forget our passwords. We pay too much to go to the gym. We think we'd be happier if we lived in California (we wouldn't), and we think we should stick with our first answer on tests (we shouldn't). Why do we make mistakes? And could we do a little better?We human beings have design flaws. Our eyes play tricks on us, our stories change in the retelling, and most of us are fairly sure we're way a

Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul

Stuart Brown, Christopher Vaughan · 229 pages

From a leading expert, a groundbreaking book on the science of play, and its essential role in fueling our intelligence and happiness throughout our lives.We’ve all seen the happiness in the face of a child while playing in the school yard. Or the blissful abandon of a golden retriever racing with glee across a lawn. This is the joy of play. By definition, play is purposeless and all-consuming. An

The Psychopath Whisperer: Inside the Minds of Those Without a Conscience

Kent A. Kiehl · 304 pages

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman · 499 pages

In his mega bestseller, Thinking, Fast and Slow, Daniel Kahneman, world-famous psychologist and winner of the Nobel Prize in Economics, takes us on a groundbreaking tour of the mind and explains the two systems that drive the way we think. System 1 is fast, intuitive, and emotional; System 2 is slower, more deliberative, and more logical. The impact of overconfidence on corporate strategies, th

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Malcolm Gladwell · 288 pages

Intuition is not some magical property that arises unbidden from the depths of our mind. It is a product of long hours and intelligent design, of meaningful work environments and particular rules and principles. This book shows us how we can hone our instinctive ability to know in an instant, helping us to bring out the best in our thinking and become better decision-makers in our homes, offices a

Born to Be Good: The Science of a Meaningful Life

Dacher Keltner · 352 pages

A new examination of the surprising origins of human goodness.

50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology: Shattering Widespread Misconceptions about Human Behavior

Scott O. Lilienfeld, Steven Jay Lynn, John Ruscio, Barry L. Beyerstein · 352 pages

50 Great Myths of Popular Psychology uses popular myths as a vehicle for helping students and laypersons to distinguish science from pseudoscience. Uses common myths as a vehicle for exploring how to distinguish factual from fictional claims in popular psychology Explores topics that readers will relate to, but often misunderstand, such as "opposites attract," "people use only 10% of their br