Moskowitz, a psychoanalyst and organisational consultant, promises a great deal having captured our attention with his title, and he manages to deliver. Through his engaging, casual and accessible style, with stories from daily life, the clinical arena and the laboratory, Moskowitz will succeed at informing, provoking and entertaining the lay reader, although his scholarly rigour will also make this book appealing to clinicians and academics. He effectively brings together the theory and practice of a range of disciplines in a refreshing way, making them comprehensible even to the untrained reader, a skill seldom displayed in this field. His experience working in a variety of settings, clinical, organisational and academic, is evident in his work as he seamlessly blends concepts from different schools of thought.

This is, in fact, what he sets out to do in his introduction: an ‘attempt to bring together and to connect what (he) can of this vast new field… to better understand human nature’. Essentially, he aims to provide a practical guide to the cognitive neuroscience revolution and demonstrate how to use scientific principles to improve our understanding of and relationship with others. Of course, it is over a hundred years since Freud outlined his wish to integrate knowledge of the brain with evolving concepts of mental functioning. Moskowitz draws on ideas from developmental psychology, learning theory, neurobiology, anthropology and linguistics, to name a few. The book contains pictures as well as case studies. Of particular note is the discussion of Bill Gates’ mindreading skills and the theory Moskowitz suggests as an explanation of Gates’ success.

My only criticism is that there are a number of typographical errors within the text, but overall, this is an exciting book, written with boundless enthusiasm – a joy to read.