The Birth of the Mind: How a Tiny Number of Genes Creates the Complexities of Human Thought

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Summary: Science writing at its best!
Review: This is an extraordinary book. It brings the reader up to speed on the fascinating and important research that is uncovering how genes and the environment conspire to build brains of extraordinary complexity. The writing is crystal clear, the style is engaging, and Marcus makes the cutting edge science he's discussing accessible to any intelligent reader. This is science writing at its best. If you enjoy reading other great science writers like Pinker and Dawkins, you'll find this a great read!

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Summary: A Special Configuration Of Proteins
Review: This is an extraordinary book. This is science writing at its best. I highly recommend this book because it is very enlightening as to the nature of our brains. There are about 30,000 genes in the human genome. About half of these are expressed in the configuration of proteins found in the human brain.

The human brain has about 100 billion neurons. You might be inclined to say "but only 30,000 genes." However, genes are complex proteins that work in combination to form the mind so there are almost endless combinations that are available to determine the functioning of the 100 billion neurons.