my mind on books

The Tell-Tale Brain: A Neuroscientist’s Quest for What Makes Us Human by V.S. Ramachandran (W.W. Norton & Co, 2011)
(link for amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

Drawing on strange and thought-provoking case studies, an eminent neurologist offers unprecedented insight into the evolution of the uniquely human brain. V. S. Ramachandran is at the forefront of his field-so much so that Richard Dawkins dubbed him the “Marco Polo of neuroscience.” Now, in a major new work, Ramachandran sets his sights on the mystery of human uniqueness. Taking us to the frontiers of neurology, he reveals what baffling and extreme case studies can teach us about normal brain function and how it evolved. Synesthesia becomes a window into the brain mechanisms that make some of us more creative than others. And autism—for which Ramachandran opens a new direction for treatment—gives us a glimpse of the aspect of being human that we understand least: self-awareness. Ramachandran tackles the most exciting and controversial topics in neurology with a storyteller’s eye for compelling case studies and a researcher’s flair for new approaches to age-old questions. Tracing the strange links between neurology and behavior, this book unveils a wealth of clues into the deepest mysteries of the human brain. 15 black-and-white illustrations.

See also: Author’s Wikipedia article

Emotional Truth by Ronald de Sousa (Oxford University Press, 2011)

(link for amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

The word “truth” retains, in common use, traces of origins that link it to trust, truth, and truce, connoting ideas of fidelity, loyalty, and authenticity. The word has become, in contemporary philosophy, encased in a web of technicalities, but we know that a true image is a faithful portrait; a true friend a loyal one. In a novel or a poem, too, we have a feel for what is emotionally true, though we are not concerned with the actuality of events and characters depicted. To have emotions is to care about certain things: we can wonder whether those things are really worth caring about. We can wonder whether our passions reflect who we are, and whether they constitute fitting responses to the vicissitudes of life. So there are two aspects to emotional truth: how well an emotion reflects the threats and promises of the world, and how well it reflects our own individual nature. That is the starting point of this book, which looks first at the analogies and disanalogies between strict propositional truth and a looser, “generic” sense of truth. As applied to emotions, generic truth is closer to those original meanings: as in a portrait’s fidelity or friend’s loyalty. Taken in this sense, the notion of emotional truth opens up large vistas on areas of life essential to our existence as social beings, and to our concerns with beauty, morality, love, death, sex, knowledge, desire, coherence, and happiness. Each of those topics illustrates some facet of the dominant theme of the book: the crucial but often ambivalent role of our emotions in grounding and yet also sometimes undermining our values. Emotions act, in holistic perspective, as ultimate arbiters of values where different and independently justified standards of value compete.

See also: Ronald de Sousa at PhilPapers

These 21 books received the most clicks through my associates account at Amazon.com, which provides a pretty good approximation of a “best of 2010” list for books on the mind:

Anatomy of the Soul: Surprising Connections between Neuroscience and Spiritual Practices That Can Transform Your Life and Relationships – at amazon.com, kindle, amazon.co.uk

The Art of Choosing – at amazon.com, kindle, amazon.co.uk

Buddha’s Brain: The Practical Neuroscience of Happiness, Love, and Wisdom – at amazon.com, kindle, amazon.co.uk

The Character of Consciousness (Philosophy of Mind) – at amazon.com, kindle, amazon.co.uk

Choke: What the Secrets of the Brain Reveal About Getting It Right When You Have To – at amazon.com, kindle, amazon.co.uk

Drive: The Surprising Truth About What Motivates Us – at amazon.com, kindle, amazon.co.uk

Fascinate: Your 7 Triggers to Persuasion and Captivation – at amazon.com, kindle, amazon.co.uk

How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like – at amazon.com, kindle, amazon.co.uk

The Male Brain – at amazon.com, kindle, amazon.co.uk

The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World – at amazon.com, kindle, amazon.co.uk

The Mind’s Eye – at amazon.com, kindle, amazon.co.uk

The New Science of the Mind: From Extended Mind to Embodied Phenomenology (Bradford Books) – at amazon.com, amazon.co.uk

Science and the Near-Death Experience: How Consciousness Survives Death – at amazon.com, kindle, amazon.co.uk

Self Comes to Mind: Constructing the Conscious Brain – at amazon.com, kindle, amazon.co.uk

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains – at amazon.com, kindle, amazon.co.uk

Stuff: Compulsive Hoarding and the Meaning of Things – at amazon.com, kindle, amazon.co.uk

The Watchman’s Rattle: Thinking Our Way Out of Extinction – at amazon.com, kindle, amazon.co.uk

Welcome to the Jungle: Everything You Ever Wanted to Know About Bipolar but Were Too Freaked Out to Ask – at amazon.com, kindle, amazon.co.uk

Where Good Ideas Come From: The Natural History of Innovation – at amazon.com, kindle, amazon.co.uk

Wisdom: From Philosophy to Neuroscience – at amazon.com, kindle, amazon.co.uk

The 14-Minute Marcel Proust: A Very Short Guide to the Greatest Novel Ever Written – at amazon.com, kindle, amazon.co.uk