How Pleasure Works: The New Science of Why We Like What We Like »

Paul Bloom is a professor of psychology at Yale University. He is the author of Descartes’ Baby and How Pleasure Works. He has contributed to The Atlantic, the New York Times, Science, and Nature. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut.

Yale psychologist Paul Bloom presents a striking and thought-provoking new understanding of pleasure, desire, and value.

The New York Times - Robin Marantz Henig

Bloom…has written a book that is different from the slew already out there on the general subject of happiness. No advice here about how to become happier by organizing your closets; Bloom is after something deeper than the mere stuff of feeling good. He analyzes how our minds have evolved certain cognitive tricks that help us negotiate the physical and social world—and how those tricks lead us to derive pleasure in some rather unexpected places.