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The World in Six Songs: How the Musical Brain Created Human Nature
Daniel J. Levitin · back to the book
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24 books with the same feel
Include books by the same authorHuman: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique
Michael S. Gazzaniga · 352 pages
One of the world's leading neuroscientists explores how best to understand the human condition by examining the biological, psychological, and highly social nature of our species within the social context of our lives.What happened along the evolutionary trail that made humans so unique? In his widely accessible style, Michael Gazzaniga looks to a broad range of studies to pinpoint the change that
Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind
Gary F. Marcus · 224 pages
Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain
Oliver Sacks · 400 pages
Music can move us to the heights or depths of emotion. It can persuade us to buy something, or remind us of our first date. It can lift us out of depression when nothing else can. It can get us dancing to its beat. But the power of music goes much, much further. Indeed, music occupies more areas of our brain than language does–humans are a musical species. Oliver Sacks’s compassionate, compelli
The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language
Steven Pinker · 525 pages
From the Preface... I have never met a person who is not interested in language. I wrote this book to try to satisfy that curiosity. Language is beginning to submit to that uniquely satisfying kind of understanding that we call science, but the news has been kept a secret. For the language lover, I hope to show that there is a world of elegance and richness in quotidian speech that far outsh
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst
Robert M. Sapolsky · 790 pages
Why do we do the things we do? Over a decade in the making, this game-changing book is Robert Sapolsky's genre-shattering attempt to answer that question as fully as perhaps only he could, looking at it from every angle. Sapolsky's storytelling concept is delightful but it also has a powerful intrinsic logic: he starts by looking at the factors that bear on a person's reaction in the precise mo
The Music Instinct: How Music Works and Why We Can't Do Without It
Philip Ball · 452 pages
The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist's Quest for What Makes Us Human
V.S. Ramachandran · 384 pages
Explores why the human brain is so unique and how it became so enchantingly complex. This title reveals what baffling and extreme case studies can teach us about the brain and how it evolved.
How the Pill Changes Everything: Your Brain on Birth Control
Sarah E. Hill · 320 pages
From Bacteria to Bach and Back - The Evolution of Minds
Daniel C. Dennett · 496 pages
xviii, 476 pages, 2 unnumbered pages of plates : 25 cm
Other Minds: The Octopus, the Sea, and the Deep Origins of Consciousness
Peter Godfrey-Smith · 272 pages
"Peter Godfrey-Smith is a leading philosopher of science. He is also a scuba diver whose underwater videos of warring octopuses have attracted wide notice. In this book, he brings his parallel careers together to tell a bold new story of how nature became aware of itself. Mammals and birds are widely seen as the smartest creatures on earth. But one other branch of the tree of life has also sproute
How Music Works: The Science and Psychology of Beautiful Sounds, from Beethoven to the Beatles and Beyond
John Powell · 264 pages
John Powell, a scientist and musician, answers questions about harmony, timbre, keys, chords, loudness, musical composition, and many more in this intriguing and original guide to acoustics.
Braintrust: What Neuroscience Tells Us About Morality
Patricia S. Churchland · 273 pages
"What is morality? Where does it come from? And why do most of us heed its call most of the time? In Braintrust, neurophilosophy pioneer Patricia Churchland argues that morality originates in the biology of the brain."--Jacket.
The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human
Jonathan Gottschall · 271 pages
The Genius of Birds
Jennifer Ackerman · 346 pages
"Birds are astonishingly intelligent creatures. In fact, according to revolutionary new research, some birds rival primates and even humans in their remarkable forms of intelligence. Like humans, many birds have enormous brains relative to their size. Although small, bird brains are packed with neurons that allow them to punch well above their weight. In The Genius of Birds, acclaimed author Jenni
Animal Wise: The Thoughts and Emotions of Our Fellow Creatures
Virginia Morell · 291 pages
This book explores the frontiers of research on animal cognition and emotion, offering a surprising examination into the hearts and minds of wild and domesticated animals. Have you ever wondered what it is like to be a fish? Or a parrot, dolphin, or an elephant? Do they experience thoughts that are similar to ours, or have feelings of grief and love? These are tough questions, but scientists are
A World Appears: A Journey Into Consciousness
Michael Pollan · 320 pages
Anarchy Evolution: Faith, Science, and Bad Religion in a World Without God
Greg Graffin, Steve Olson · 290 pages
A provocative look at the collision between religion and science-by the founding member of the cult punk band Bad Religion who is also a professor.
The Man Who Couldn't Stop
David Adam · 324 pages
**An intimate look at the power of intrusive thoughts, how our brains can turn against us, and living with obsessive compulsive disorder** Have you ever had a strange urge to jump from a tall building or steer your car into oncoming traffic? You are not alone. In this captivating fusion of science, history, and personal memoir, David Adam explores the weird thoughts that exist within every mind
Me, Myself, and Why: Searching for the Science of Self
Jennifer Ouellette
"A fascinating survey of the forces that shape who we are and how we act-from the author of The Calculus Diaries. Following her previous tours through the worlds of physics (Black Bodies and Quantum Cats) and calculus (The Calculus Diaries), acclaimed science writer Jennifer Ouellette now turns her attention to the mysteries of human identity and behavior with Me, Myself, and Why. She draws on gen
The Believing Brain: From Ghosts and Gods to Politics and Conspiracies How We Construct Beliefs and Reinforce Them as Truths
Michael Shermer · 385 pages
Shermer demonstrates how our brains selectively assess data in an attempt to confirm the conclusions (beliefs) we've already reached. Drawing on evolution, cognitive science, and neuroscience, he considers not only supernatural beliefs but political and economic ones as well.
Brain Bugs: How the Brain's Flaws Shape Our Lives
Dean Buonomano · 320 pages
Neuroscientist Dean Buonomano illuminates the causes and consequences of the brain's imperfections in terms of its innermost workings and its evolutionary purposes. He then examines how our brains function--and malfunction--in the digital, predator-free, information-saturated, special-effects-addled world we have built for ourselves.