This book opens with the story of Phinneas Gage, a protagonist familiar to psychology students as the man who survived an iron tamping rod being shot through his skull. Although he suffered no loss in memory, language, or motor control, Gage's personality changed from warm and responsible to reckless and impulsive. Damasio identifies the injured region of Gage's brain as the ventromedial prefrontal cortex and goes on to discuss how Gage and modern victims of injury to this area are changed. In so doing, Damasio presents his "somatic marker hypothesis," which proposes that, when we encounter any emotional stimulus, we encode the physiological state of our bodies (soma = body) along with the memory of the stimulus. When the stimulus is encountered again, we recall our earlier state and rapidly gain information about whether our last encounter was pleasant, frightening, etc. Without a ventromedial prefrontal cortex, this information is unavailable. Although such emotional information is often discounted as "immature" or unreliable, Damasio presents evidence showing that we use our emotional reactions to stimuli to assist us in making complex decisions. What would we be like without emotions? Many people imagine Star Trek characters such as Data or Spock, possessed of the enviable ability to reason logically. Damasio's argument suggests that the answer may be closer to Phinneas Gage - debilitated in decision-making when "gut-level" reactions would be useful.

Tim Wilson is a social psychologist at the University of Virginia who, since he was a graduate student working with Dick Nisbett at the University of Michigan in the 1970s, has focused on a topic he calls "the limits of introspection." We typically assume that, if we simply look within ourselves, we have the ability to uncover the reasons for our behavior. In this book, Wilson reviews his own research and the research of others to propose that, in many cases, introspection is more creation than discovery. This is a very readable book, packed with clear and engaging descriptions of research, and is an excellent introduction to contemporary research on unconscious / implicit processes.

Gladwell is a gifted writer for The New Yorker who has taken an interest in topics of perennial interest to social psychology. In this book, he proposes that many rapid sociological changes (e.g., the drop in crime rate in NYC) may be attributable to a small number of social factors. This book presents a highly readable account of many classic social psychological studies and enough anecdotes to satisfy lecturers looking for fresh material.

LeDoux is the reigning rock star of the neuroscience world, and in this book he reviews major theories of emotion (the book is worth it just for this) and discusses what recent neuroscience research tells us about the physiology of LeDoux's favorite emotion: fear. This book can be rather technical in places, but LeDoux follows Daryl Bem's dictum that "good writing is good teaching."

• Neuromancer (William Gibson): Gibson is probably the most stylistically gifted contemporary science fiction writer. His writing is beautiful but his narrative is often playfully cryptic - expect not to understand immediately what is going on. This book, written in the 1980s, anticipates the world wide web and actually coins the term "cyberspace." In addition to his style, Gibson gives one of the best descriptions of artificial intelligence that I have encountered.
• The Difference Engine (William Gibson and Bruce Sterling): What if Charles Babbage had succeeded in his development of a mechanical (as opposed to electrical) computer, and the information age arrived powered by steam rather than electricity? Gibson and Sterling do a terrific job envisioning how this technology would transform industrial-revolution-era London. The plot combines politics, technology, and a mysterious computational sub-plot that is not revealed until the end but is worth the wait.
• 1984 (George Orwell): This is a classic dystopian (as opposed to utopian) novel describing the protagonist's awakening and struggle against a totalitarian government.