Robert Ornstein

A psychologist and writer who began the conversation about the differing roles of the right and left hemispheres in his best-selling The Psychology of Consciousness twenty-five years ago, Ornstein has in his books and lectures provided a running commentary on the significance of what we are learning about the brain. Now the time has come for a new synthesis: The Right Mind. It is short but rich in its detail, light-hearted but profound in its conclusions. A central argument of The Right Mind is that while facts (what we might think of as text) are stored and processed in the left hemisphere, the right mind sets the context and makes sense of it all. And so it is with this book. Ornstein has incorporated the important facts and then set the whole thing in context.

A Series of books in psychology; Variation: Series of books in psychology.

Examines the human mind and brain, traces the history of "consciousness" as we know it, and suggests that humans need to understand and redirect their consciousness in order to solve the problems of the modern era.

Explores ways to extend our lives as we enrich them, by understanding the role of pleasure in our health.

"The brain is like an old ramshackle house that has been added on to over the years in a rather disorganized fashion. In this book, we look at the architecture of that house, first by taking a tour through the various "rooms" and then by going deeper and deeper into the material with which those rooms are constructed. Later we consider some of the mysteries of the brain and human experience. The drawings and diagrams appearing throughout will help you to visualize some of the more complex aspects of the amazing organ that is the human brain."--[from preface].

Simply the most important book for the survival of the human species I have read in the past 25 years. Investigates, documents, and explains how humans, even very smart humans with Ph.Ds, make very poor short term vs long term decisions, specifically about things like overpopulation and climate change. This book is about how the human brain evolved in the old world to meet the old world's challenges, but how our old brain no longer makes correct decisions in our modern, industrialized world. As Earth heats from global warming, I think the only hope now to save the human species is to start by clearly understanding the nature of our underlying problem. I think these two authors have presented that problem squarely in New World New Mind. It's not technology that will save us. It is understanding our human nature and correcting for it. In their final chapter they suggest a valuable strategy to cope with our brain's evolved handycap. Yes, this is an older book now, but I think it's message is more important than ever as of late 2016, where the future of life on Earth now looks very dark to this environmentalist and engineer.