Books like The Seven Sins of Memory

01

Thinking, Fast and Slow

Daniel Kahneman · Psychology

Thinking, Fast and Slow is Daniel Kahneman's account of the two cognitive systems that govern human thought.

A kindred psychology read.

02

Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst

Robert M. Sapolsky · Science

Behave is Robert Sapolsky's attempt to explain why humans do what they do — the violence, the altruism, the tribalism, the heroism — by working through every layer of biology that contributes to a single act.

Both dig into neuroscience.

03

Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking

Malcolm Gladwell · Psychology

Blink is Malcolm Gladwell's argument that fast, unconscious decisions — the ones made in the first two seconds of encountering something — are often just as reliable as slow, deliberate analysis, and sometimes more so.

A kindred psychology read.

04

Predictably Irrational

Dan Ariely · Psychology

Predictably Irrational is Dan Ariely's examination of how humans make decisions that are consistently, systematically irrational — not random or arbitrary, but irrational in ways that follow patterns.

A kindred psychology read.

05

Brain on Fire: My Month of Madness

Susannah Cahalan · Memoir

Brain on Fire is Susannah Cahalan's account of the month she spent in a New York hospital in 2009, during which she experienced psychosis, paranoia, violent behavior, catatonia, and seizures — and was nearly committed to a psychiatric facility before a doctor correctly diagnosed her with anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis, a newly described autoimmune disease in which the body attacks the brain.

Shares memory and neuroscience with The Seven Sins of Memory.

06

Consciousness Explained

Daniel C. Dennett · Philosophy

Consciousness Explained is Daniel Dennett's attempt to replace what he calls the Cartesian Theater — the intuitive picture of consciousness as a single unified stream of experience observed by a self — with a model he calls Multiple Drafts.

Shares cognition and neuroscience with The Seven Sins of Memory.

07

Moonwalking with Einstein

Joshua Foer · Science

Moonwalking with Einstein is Joshua Foer's account of spending a year training for and winning the United States Memory Championship, beginning as a journalist covering the event and ending as its champion.

Shares memory and cognition with The Seven Sins of Memory.

08

The Shallows: What the Internet Is Doing to Our Brains

Nicholas Carr · Science

The Shallows is Nicholas Carr's argument that the internet — and the way we habitually use it, skimming hyperlinked text, watching short videos, checking feeds — is reshaping the neural circuits responsible for deep reading and sustained concentration.

Shares cognition and neuroscience with The Seven Sins of Memory.

09

A General Theory of Love

Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon · Psychology

A General Theory of Love is a 2000 book by three psychiatrists at the University of California, San Francisco — Thomas Lewis, Fari Amini, and Richard Lannon — who set out to explain love scientifically without stripping it of its significance.

Both dig into neuroscience.

10

Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain

Antonio Damasio · Psychology

Antonio Damasio is a neurologist at USC whose work challenges the centuries-old idea that reason and emotion are separate faculties, with reason the reliable guide and emotion the unreliable interference.

Both dig into neuroscience.

11

Hardwiring Happiness: The New Brain Science of Contentment, Calm, and Confidence

Rick Hanson · Psychology

Rick Hanson is a neuropsychologist and meditation teacher, and this book is his attempt to explain why wellbeing is so hard to sustain and what the brain science suggests you can do about it.

Both dig into neuroscience.

12

How Emotions Are Made: The Secret Life of the Brain

Lisa Feldman Barrett · Psychology

Lisa Feldman Barrett is a neuroscientist and psychologist at Northeastern University who has spent thirty years studying emotion, and her conclusion challenges the most widely held view of what emotions are.

Both dig into neuroscience.