The Accidental Mind

How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God

By: David J. Linden

Narrated by: Ray Porter

You've probably seen it before: a human brain dramatically lit from the side, the camera circling it like a helicopter shot of Stonehenge, and a modulated baritone voice exalting the brain's elegant design in reverent tones... to which this book says: Pure nonsense.

In a work at once deeply learned and wonderfully accessible, the neuroscientist David Linden counters the widespread assumption that the brain is a paragon of design - and in its place gives us a compelling explanation of how the brain's serendipitous evolution has resulted in nothing short of our humanity.

A guide to the strange and often illogical world of neural function, The Accidental Mind shows how the brain is not an optimized, general-purpose problem-solving machine, but rather a weird agglomeration of ad-hoc solutions that have been piled on through millions of years of evolutionary history.

Moreover, Linden tells us how the constraints of evolved brain design have ultimately led to almost every transcendent human foible: our long childhoods, our extensive memory capacity, our search for love and long-term relationships, our need to create compelling narrative, and, ultimately, the universal cultural impulse to create both religious and scientific explanations. With forays into evolutionary biology, this analysis of mental function answers some of our most common questions about how we've come to be who we are. The book is published by Harvard University Press.

©2007 The President and Fellows of Harvard College (P)2010 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"This is a terrific book that accomplishes its aim of presenting a biological view of how the brain works, and does so in a charming, fetching style." (Joshua R. Sanes, Professor of Molecular and Cellular Biology, Harvard University)

Good facts and background,

Would you listen to The Accidental Mind again? Why?

yes

Who was your favorite character and why?

n/'a

Have you listened to any of Ray Porter???s other performances before? How does this one compare?

no

If you were to make a film of this book, what would be the tag line be?

n/a

Any additional comments?

a few too many details of the biochemistgry in several places for an audiobook, but overall very informative, lots of good examples and applications. Most technically oriented people will enjoy.

Challenging Listen

Fascinating book (to me, I know all those different receptors aren't for everyone) but quite challenging to follow if you do stuff that requires much thought while you listen. Reader is excellent in his ability to make sense of the sometimes dense prose, although he does make a few pronunciation errors.

Excellent Overview of the Brain

Any additional comments?

The Accidental Mind provides an excellent overview of the development and processes of the human brain. It is long enough to have covered a broad spectrum of topics and to have gone reasonably in-depth, but still concise enough that it held my interest throughout. The narrator, Ray Porter, did an outstanding job. He was animated, did an excellent job of channeling the author's intent, and wasn't an enunciating drone as so many non-fiction narrators are. I'm actually interested in seeing what other audiobooks this narrator has read - a first for me.

tough to follow at times

a little dry, the narrator is actually fantastic, I'm used to hearing Porter in the Joe Ledger novels so i was always expecting him to start talking about the inner workings of the brain, and then have a zombie eat it.

Good listen but strong scientific bent

Although this has a strong scientifc bent, I enjoyed the entire book; but like the two previous posters, I have a science background. The material is extremely interesting, but some may find it less than enthralling with all the scientific explanations. Having said that, how could any writing about the function of the human brain not have a strong scientific bent...