books@cc.

Joy, Sorrow, and the Feeling Brain
by Antonio Damasio (2003)

A very basic neuropsychology account with (Wiggish) references to and semi-biographical account of Spinoza.

The Evolutionary Legacy
by Mel Greaves (2000)

A comprehensive analysis of the disease with a lucidity that will engage both layman and specialist readers alike.

How Our Brains Become Who We Are
by Joseph LeDoux (2002)

Analyses the way the psychological, social, moral, aesthetic or spiritual self is realised through the interconnectivity between neurons.

How the secrests of the brain were uncovered in seventeenth-century England
by Carl Zimmer (2004)

An account of how people “first” became aware of the secrets of human brain in the seventeenth century, with particular focus on major players, i.e. Thomas Willis and his contemporaries such as Wren, Descartes, Harvey, Boyle, and Hooke.

How our animal heritage affects the way we live
by Jared Diamond (1991)

How the human species changed, within a short time, from just another species of big mammal to a world conqueror; and how we acquired the capacity to reverse all that progress overnight.

A Harm Minimisation Approach
edited by Margaret Hamilton, Allan Kellehear, Greg Rumbold
Oxford University Press, Australia, 1998

An introductory book containing essays about drugs and drug use in Australia that challenge the “prevailing” (?) judgemental, often insufferably simplistic views about drugs and drug use, and discuss instead the current “harm minimisation” approach, aimed mainly for tertiary students, but readable for general public.

by Richard P. Bentall

Central to this book argument is Bentall’s proposal to “abandon psychiatric diagnoses altogether and instead try to explain and understand the actual experiences and behaviours of psychotic people”, that this approach will provide a richer account of aetiology than using Kraepelinian paradigm. Madness is a matter of opinion, and psychiatric problems must be approached from multiple perspectives.

How Societies Choose to Fail or Survive
by Jared Diamond (2005).

Whereas Guns, Germs and Steel explains why history unfolded differently on different continents with varying successes, Collapse gives the other side of the coin: how societies crumble.