'Powerful and gripping... To have read it is to have consulted a first draft of the structural plan of the human psyche ... a glittering tour de force' Spectator Why do we laugh? What makes memories fade? Why do people believe in ghosts? From the acclaimed author of Enlightenment Now and Better Angels of Our Nature, How the Mind Works explores every aspect of mental life, showing that our minds are not a mystery, but a system of organs of computation designed by natural selection. 'Pinker's objective in this erudite account is to explore the nature and history of the human mind ... He explores computations and evolutions, and then considers how the mind lets us "see, think, feel, interact, and pursue higher callings like art, religion and philosophy' Sunday Times