How We Decide by Jonah Lehrer

In the lazy days of winter break, I've taken to reading a fair amount. In fact, I've probably been more productive in my reading than I am while at school. Some of my books I've neglected or all-together abandoned, but a few have sustained my attention through their final pages. Among this select group is Jonah Lehrer's How We Decide, a work of pop-psychology that explores recent findings within neuroscience that help explain the human decision-making process. While this may appear to some as a bland topic for leisure reading, the author successfully utilizes the anecdotal style that has worked for others like Malcolm Gladwell and Oliver Sacks. Similarly, though the book inevitably makes reference to such strange terms as "nucleus accumbens" and "ventromedial prefrontal cortex", it is not without a certain amount of personification that eases the non-expert's exploration of the subject matter. In fact, my main worry in reading the book was that it would be an oversimplification of the science. While this may in fact be the case, I think Mr. Lehrer is probably to be trusted, as he has managed to land writing gigs for Science, the New Yorker, The Boston Globe, and other big name places. For only his sophomore effort - his first being Proust was a Neuroscientist - I'd say this kid's got promise.


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