Head games

A neuroscientist and science blogger for the Guardian, Dean Burnett’s debut is Idiot Brain: What Your Head Is Really Up To (W. W. Norton, $26.95), which stresses that our brains, while wonderful indeed, are far from perfect. In fact, they are those imperfections that often have the greatest effect on our behavior, like opting for what “feels true” instead of facts. The good news is that Burnett is really funny—he’s also a stand-up comedian, and it shows. Better yet, he covers a lot of ground, providing solid information backed up by research, to tell us why we act so weird.