Rating: 
Summary: Disappointing! Pinker did not try hard here.
Review: I was a psychology and biology major in college and am innately interested in brain research, so Pinker's thesis sounded fascinating. But the book is not; it is boring, and I could not finish it. Pinker wrote this very casually, it is not a rigorous study and does not cover really very much material. Instead, it is more a narrative, a transcript of Pinker thinking out loud. This is one of those occasions I really regretted the high cost of a hardback.A friend studied cognitive science (really a subfield of psych, with a lot of computer science mixed in) at MIT, so I passed the book along to him. He later confessed he became bored and put it away. His honesty about my mediocre gift confirmed my suspicions. This is not a good book, although it may entertain some who are new to the field. Even if you are new to psych, however, there are much better places to start.
Rating: 
Summary: Nothing about how the mind works
Review: Desperate attempts at making an apple out of an orange. Little to do with the mind, only an artificial web of stolen ideas from computer science.
Rating: 
Summary: A Good Place to Start Reading about Cognition
Review: Pinker explains some very difficult concepts as clearly and as simply as is possible. This is the best kind of science writing: it deals with the subject in a sophisticated, fair manner, yet it keeps its the pace lively and entertaining.
Rating:
Summary: Pretentious and ultimately useless
Review: There's no denying that Pinker is an entertaining writer. You might be annoyed if you start to feel that he's trying to juggle too many conceptual balls at once. The danger is that his charm may make you overlook the vacuousness of his evolutionary pronouncements. Does he really think each of the many "algorithms" he says are needed for our intelligence and consciousness fortituously arrived miraculously as needed? Doesn't he understand the biological and molecular complexity required for even the "simplest" algorithms to be programmed into matter? And the difficulties involved not only in the absence of these programs, but in the many failed attempts that must have preceded? His "just-so" evolutionary scenarios and "explanations", vague as can be, are no substitute for science, and are totally useless. Perhaps he will reconsider after reading Behe's "Darwin's Black Box" ... but that would take a more open mind. One can only hope.
Rating:
Summary: Same old mistakes.
Review: ...At the end, however, Pinker writes an authoritative and comprehensive book, that makes many brilliant points, and argues for some plausible evolutionary psychology. I recomend it because it is a classic in the field allready, and a good read. But the computer methaphor is not an easy position to hold with today's modern neuroscience research...
Rating: 
Summary: Never one for hyperbole. ...
Review: Are you as big a reader as Steven Pinker is a thinker? His books are grand, life-changing events. The subjects he writes about are like distant high mountain peaks, and his books bring the mountains to you, guiding you through with the deft, surefooted skills of a sherpa, in and out of points and conclusions, up and down narrow trails of anecdotes and speculation. He's pumping ideas so big that it apparently makes some readers want to deflate them, to turn the lens around so things look distant again, and just blow them off. Don't do it! "How the Mind Works" is big, and it makes you wonder why he would tackle such a big topic in laymen's terms? As it turns out, he is again very good at leading the reader on a tour of unsuspected knowledge, but this is more like a tour of the fertile flood plain, with a Belgian draft horse as a guide-- the overall effect seems like Pinker is inviting you to take up the plow and work on your mental models and your awareness of the neurological basis of cognition. Again, he is surefooted and well-founded in his knowledge of other thinkers' ideas and writings. Reading this book gives you the 30,000 ft view of contemporary cognitive issues for philosophers and clinicians. It isn't just a survey or a collection; he's an original. In this age where we all might conceivably be diagnosed with one or another neurological problem, he's busy trying to clarify what we know, and clear the rubble of past ages by disabusing us of common conceptions like the homunculus theory of mind. At paperback prices, this is a great and edifying book, full of thinkable ideas, radically new ideas, and especially full of fantastic quotes and illustrations that will convince you that Steven is quite sincere, quite an expert, and worth as many hours and book darts as you care to spend on this book. Compare it to the interesting recent anatomical/functional view of the brain and its processes in "A User's Guide to the Brain" (John Ratey, MD) to get more sense of the depth and breadth of Pinker's content.
Rating:
Summary: A tedious promoton of a theoretical point of view
Review: I bought this book based on reviews here and have not enjoyed it at all. I'm a writer, and I find the writing wordy and uninteresting--it takes the author forever to make his points. The questions the book supposedly addresses are fascinating, but the answers take too long to reach and end up being anti-climatic. I also thought the author has a bias, misrepresenting other theories in order to beat them down. It amazes me that the book has so many positive reviews--I wonder if they are mostly written by technically saavy types who embrace the subject matter and the "our minds are computers" view. My background is in teaching, pschology, and the arts, and I bought this book hoping to understand more about human nature and who we are. I found it a tedious promotion of a limitted, theoretical point of view.
Rating:
Summary: Amazing book
Review: This is probably one of the best books I've ever read.
It explains most of the misteries of life that really counts on the success of your life.
Why do we act like we do? What are people's motivations? What are the most effective ways to mislead people and to manipulate them?
Applications of this book are countless! If the mind works as a computer, this book is as good as it gets as the "source code" of the human behaviour... once you have access to it, you have countless ways to hack (and crack) the entire system! (and which is best, without getting noticed!)
Together with "The Prince" (Macchiavelli), this books gives you ammunition to manipulate people for a lifetime or so. You can illude people and make them believe they are succeeding while they are not,... you can make them work for YOUR aims like lab rats! OK, I admit I've been intuitivelly using most of this book's "survival of the fittest techniques" for most of my life. The financial and love-life successes I've been having in my life are proving it so far.
Now that I understand how this thing works, I'll take these actions to unprecendent levels. "I feel smarter, more aggressive, I feel like I could....take on the World!" (gamers will understand this claim :-) (...)
Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: This is surely one of the best books ever written about cognitive science.
The author makes it very clear from the beggining that it is a compilation of other books and studies... But what a piece of compilation!
It has an extensive and very useful bibliography for anyone interested on deepening his/her knowledge about the many subjects of the book.
Rating:
Summary: Evolution and computation
Review: Though this is a long book that doesn't feel very cohesive, it is still a fascinating read. It is almost a philosophy book, albeit one that uses scientific ideas to explain how we behave and why we do so. The central premise is that we evolved, and because we evolved, our brains are products of natural selection. The first half of the book explains how this is possible, and how the brain itself processes information in various ways. The second half is probably more interesting to most readers (including me), but only because the discussion on how the brain operates changes to a discussion on our instincts and desires, with a great chapter on relationships with other people. It is at times tedious to read, but it's not a difficult textbook (almost pop-cog-sci) so if you're interested in cognitive science, you might enjoy it.
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