Bookshelf: Free-Range Reading

Cold-Blooded Kindness

By Barbara Oakley

This true-crime tale is as oxymoronic as the title suggests: An animal-loving mother of four kills her husband execution-style. Oakley studs the book with input from experts on battered women, altruism, and empathy gone awry. Her approach taps yet another paradox: We can understand genetic influences and remain baffled by any one human's behavior.

Read this if: you're convinced people are never who they appear to be.

Be Different

By John Elder Robison

In this charming collection of biographical stories sewn up with lessons, Robison encourages "Aspergians" to build their best traits and work around ones that impede success. Readers get a nuanced view: "When you can't read the unspoken messages of love, all you have to go on are the words and observed behaviors...two messages [that] can be sharply at odds with each other."

Read this if: you enjoy peering at the world from others' eyes.

The Compass of Pleasure

By David J. Linden

How do orgasms, heroin, greasy foods, and juicy gossip jolt the same neurons? Neuroscientist David Linden delves into the research, mixing in plenty of trippy anecdotes (including a few from his undergrad years at Berkeley). He concludes with fascinating musings on a future where we can electronically activate our pleasure circuits at will, creating personal pleasure cocktails of, say, lust, thrill, and a bit of food satiety.

Read this if: you wish you'd been wilder in college.

Moonwalking With Einstein

By Joshua Foer

Foer's just a regular guy destined for the U.S. Memory Championships, during which participants must, say, memorize the order of several decks of cards in minutes. Recounting his training (a catalogue of stealable strategies for building up your own recall) and the comically erudite characters he meets along the way, Foer wavers between awe of the brain's capacity and regret that we ultimately retain—and understand—very little.

Read this if: you fantasize about excelling in one domain.

Future Babble

By Dan Gardner

This quick-moving exposition of experts' flops and misses reveals a bubble-bursting truth: Predictions are fairly worthless. Robbed of the comforting illusion of certainty, readers are given the empowering reminder that as long as we have information, we can draw our own conclusions, rather than relying on falsely confident forecasters.

Read this if: you think you'd make a better pundit than those primetime talking heads.

The Blame Game

By Ben Dattner

Whether you love or loathe your job likely comes down to how fairly your workplace allocates blame and credit. Dattner delves into the psychological and cultural reasons we can't stop pointing fingers, providing tips so that next time you're in a high-stakes office situation, you'll recognize the credit/blame imbalances and think, "recalculating."

Read this if: you daydream about storming away from your job a la Jet Blue's Steven Slater.

Groupthink

Brain-to-brain communication

Imagine if a wireless-enabled laptop were shrunk wafer-thin and implanted in your skull, exchanging info with the neurons there. You could silently share thoughts and feelings—so, say, a cop could sense, via transmitted brain activity, that his buddy had been shot, and a wired-in dispatcher could send an ambulance. This is the future imagined by science writer Michael Chorost in World Wide Mind, a research-backed argument that we might someday marry processing chips with our Paleolithic bodies. Sound outlandish? Chorost offers present-day analogies.

TODAY: You dictate who can see your Facebook page

TOMORROW: You'll control who can access your brain. A computer disconnected from the net is safer—if less useful—than a hooked-up one. Likewise, "plugging in would be dangerous, so you'd need safeguards to keep track of who can tap your thoughts," Chorost says.

TODAY: Filters split spam from legit missives

TOMORROW: Computer programs will detect and block "implanted" thoughts. Could hackers highjack a wired brain? "It's a terrifying thought," Chorost admits. But our sophisticated minds would probably reject planted ideas. "The brain's experience of remembering is so rich and multidimensional. An artificial idea would likely feel flat."

TODAY: The government certifies drivers (and punishes those who don't follow the rules)

TOMORROW: A future society will provide guidelines for using the World Wide Mind. "People get serious about technology when it affects their bodies," Chorost says; that's why anyone can surf the net, but you need a license to get behind the wheel. "We'd need training—and a moral code—to use this new network safely and efficiently." —Andrea Bartz