The best of the brain books in 2016 featured deception, empathy, placebos, gaming, algorithms, microbes and that little voice in your head. Whether touching on psychology, neuroscience or the mind more broadly construed, the eight books on this list are top reads in a genre always popping with new titles.
The Confidence Game: Why We Fall for It…Every Time
By Maria Konnikova (Viking Books)
Why are we so easily and repeatedly fooled even when we’ve fallen for the same con before? If you want to know, and really want to understand the backstory of your gullibility, this is the book to read. Maria Konnikova’s latest is an exploration of how cons work and why we fall for them—a deconstruction of psychological dynamics, tactics, ploys and susceptibilities illuminated by an excellent communicator. Whether it's a parking lot grifter, a pyramid scheme huckster or a political manipulator, this book explains how and why their deception so often works. Read it and maybe you’ll be better prepared the next time someone starts a sentence with, “Imagine this…” or ends one with “…believe me.”
The Voices Within: The History and Science of How We Talk to Ourselves
By Charles Fernyhough (Basic Books)
Talk to yourself? We all do, all the time, and the voices persist even when you'd rather they shush. The “inner voice” is becoming a prime-time topic in brain studies, and Fernyhough’s book is a solid entry in the discussion. It provides enough science to ground the argument, but the real achievement here is the writing. The author is a psychologist and a novelist, and his prose has a narrative feel that separates it from most books on the psych shelf. The subject is one of the tough brain conundrums that’s far from settled; we’ll be trying to figure out the role of the inner voice long from now, but Fernyhough’s book is a readable take on what we know and where the questions may go next.
Against Empathy: The Case for Rational Compassion
By Paul Bloom (Ecco)
Is empathy the same as compassion? Paul Bloom says it isn’t, and he’s marshaled convincing reasons for you to believe him. You have to admire a book that takes a tough stand against an entrenched position, knowing full well the blowback it’s going to receive. Bloom’s argument that our hyper-emphasis on empathy is actually hurting us is controversial, no doubt, and you might bristle hearing it. But Bloom is such a persuasive apologist for his position—a position supported by more research than most realize—it’s worth reading to at least expand your perspective, and quite possibly come away thinking differently about a topic that's a giant magnet for assumptions.
I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life
By Ed Yong (Ecco)
Several books diving into the expanding science of microbial influence hit the shelves in 2016, and Yong’s book is top-shelf among them. Exceptionally well-researched, it weaves together what’s known so far about the surprising role microbes play across a range of species—from altering how chemicals are processed to zombie mind control—and draws sharp focus on the gaps in knowledge. Because this is one of the most dynamic areas percolating in popular science, it’s ripe for exaggeration. But Yong, a science writer with the right amount of sober skepticism, doesn’t fall into that trap. Instead, he tells his readers what rests on solid research and what’s speculative without blurring the all-important line in between. The result is a model for doing science writing well.
Play Anything: The Pleasure of Limits, the Uses of Boredom, and the Secret of Games
By Ian Bogost (Basic Books)
Of all the books on this list, this may be the hardest to describe, and in my assessment that was an asset. The year saw a few new entries in the “Tackle life’s challenges like a game” category, a thesis that’s gaining momentum, but this book goes deeper than most via an enlightening discussion of the role of limits in both games and life. Bogost strikes me as equal parts philosopher and savant game enthusiast—a systems thinker with a penchant for high score formulas—and I’m glad he wrote Play Anything because it’s causing me to look at problems in a different way. Read it and I think you’ll see why.
Peak: Secrets from the New Science of Expertise
By Anders Erikson and Robert Pool (Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt)
I’m going to make a strange comment about this book: I was pretty sure I’d be writing about it several years before it was published. That’s because back when I first heard of Anders Erikson, Outliers by Malcolm Gladwell was hitting the scene, and I emailed Erikson to get an interview about his thoughts on how Gladwell couched "deliberate practice,” which came from Erikson’s research. The response was (paraphrasing), “Sorry, I’d like to talk but I’ve got to get my book finished.” Well, in 2016 that book appeared. If you’ve read Outliers, you’ll immediately have context for Peak and the scientific backstory will become clearer. And if you haven’t read Outliers, but have heard about the "10,000 hour rule" and deliberate practice, this is the book to read now.
Algorithms to Live By: The Computer Science of Human Decisions
By Brian Christian and Tom Griffiths (Henry Holt and Co.)
Don’t bother organizing your emails or your office desk. You can also stop searching for a time management system or an ideal scheduling plan. And when you’re looking for somewhere to eat, don’t spend too much time considering new places versus your old standbys. The reasons why (and reasons for many more suggestions) are best revealed by understanding the algorithms that exert influence on our daily lives—so argue the authors of this surprisingly useful book that travels from computer science to human decision-making with more fluidity than you might guess. The result is both a dense primer on the algorithms of decision-making and a tip-filled guide for making better decisions.
Cure: A Journey into the Science of Mind Over Body
By Jo Marchant (Crown)
We're in a period of intense interest in the ways the mind influences the body. The placebo effect, for example, publicly surfaced 70 or so years ago, but the science behind why it works is only now becoming clearer. That's exciting, but the downside of this elevated interest is that frauds and over-staters have grabbed onto the mind-body connection and flooded the public with claims ranging from silly to irresponsible (i.e. positive thinking can cure cancer). Cure is an important book that cuts through the nonsense, clarifies the science and tells the story how it really is. Maybe that's not as uplifting as a book making fanciful claims with thin evidence, but it's engagingly real—and we need more of that.
You can find David DiSalvo on Twitter, Facebook, Google Plus, and at his website, daviddisalvo.org.
