Originally featured in September.

5. INCOGNITO

Sum: Forty Tales from the Afterlives by neuroscientist David Eagleman is one of my favorite books of the past few years, so I was thrilled for the release of Eagleman's latest gem, Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain -- a fascinating, dynamic, faceted look under the hood of the conscious mind to reveal the complex machinery of the subconscious. Equal parts entertaining and illuminating, the book's case studies, examples, and insight are more than mere talking points to impress at the next dinner party, poised instead to radically shift your understanding of the world, other people, and your own mind.

Bringing a storyteller's articulate and fluid narrative to a scientist's quest, Eagleman dances across an incredible spectrum of issues -- brain damage, dating, drugs, beauty, synesthesia, criminal justice, artificial intelligence, optical illusions, and much more -- to reveal that things we take as passive givens, from our capacity for seeing a rainbow to our ability to overhear our name in a conversation we weren't paying attention to, are the function of remarkable neural circuitry, biological wiring, and cognitive conditioning.

The three-pound organ in your skull -- with its pink consistency of Jell-o -- is an alien kind of computational material. It is composed of miniaturized, self-configuring parts, and it vastly outstrips anything we've dreamt of building. So if you ever feel lazy or dull, take heart: you're the busiest, brightest thing on the planet. --David Eagleman

Sample some of Eagleman's fascinating areas of study with this excellent talk from TEDxAlamo:

Originally featured in June.

6. WHAT DOES IT MEAN TO BE HUMAN?

Last year, we explored what it means to be human from the perspectives of three different disciplines -- philosophy, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology -- and that omnibus went on to become one of the most-read articles in Brain Pickings history. But the question at its heart is among the most fundamental inquiries of existence, one that has puzzled, tormented, and inspired humanity for centuries. That is exactly what Joanna Bourke (of Fear: A Cultural History fame) explores in What It Means to Be Human: Historical Reflections from the 1800s to the Present.

Decades before women sought liberation in the bicycle or their biceps, a more rudimentary liberation was at stake. The book opens with a letter penned in 1872 by an anonymous author identified simply as "An Earnest Englishwoman," a letter titled "Are Women Animals?" by the newspaper editor who printed it:

Sir -- Whether women are the equals of men has been endlessly debated; whether they have souls has been a moot point; but can it be too much to ask [for a definitive acknowledgement that at least they are animals? ... Many hon. members may object to the proposed Bill enacting that, in statutes respecting the suffrage, 'wherever words occur which import the masculine gender they shall be held to include women;' but could any object to the insertion of a clause in another Act that 'whenever the word "animal" occur it shall be held to include women?' Suffer me, through your columns, to appeal to our 650 [parliamentary] representatives, and ask -- Is there not one among you then who will introduce such a motion? There would then be at least an equal interdict on wanton barbarity to cat, dog, or woman.... Yours respectfully, AN EARNEST ENGLISHWOMAN

The broader question at the heart of the Earnest Englishwoman's outrage, of course, isn't merely about gender -- "women" could have just as easily been any other marginalized group, from non-white Europeans to non-Westerners to even children, or a delegitimized majority-politically-treated-as-minority more appropriate to our time, such as the "99 percent." The question, really, is what entitles one to humanness.