How Pleasure Works The New Science of Why We Like What We Like - Hardcover

“This book is not just a pleasure, but a revelation, by one of psychology’s deepest thinkers and best writers. Lucid and fascinating, you’ll want to read it slowly and savor the experience.”―Daniel Gilbert, author of Stumbling on Happiness

“Following the path of pleasure, Bloom leads us through a menagerie of human strangeness. By the end of the trip, the ‘magic inside us’ begins to make sense. This book is a pearl, a work of great beauty and value, built up around a simple truth: that we are essentialists, tuned-in to unseen order.”―Jonathan Haidt, author of The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom

“Paul Bloom is among the deepest thinkers and clearest writers in the science of mind today. He has a knack for coming up with genuinely new insights about mental life―ones that you haven’t already read about or thought of―and making them seem second nature through vivid examples and lucid explanations.”―Steven Pinker, author of How the Mind Works

“How Pleasure Works has one of the best discussions I’ve read of why art is pleasurable, why it matters to us, and why it moves us so.”―Daniel Levitin, author of This Is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession

“In this eloquent and provocative book, Paul Bloom takes us inside the paradoxes of pleasure, exploring everything from cannibalism to Picasso to IKEA furniture. The quirks of delight, it turns out, are a delightful way to learn about the human mind.”―Jonah Lehrer, author of How We Decide

Paul Bloom is a Professor of Psychology at Yale University. His research explores how children and adults understand the physical and social world, with special focus on morality, religion, fiction, and art. He has won numerous awards for his research and teaching. He is past-president of the Society for Philosophy and Psychology, and co-editor of Behavioural and Brain. Bloom has written for scientific journals such as Nature and Science, and for popular outlets such as The New York Times, the Guardian, and the Atlantic. He is the author or editor of four books, including How Children Learn the Meanings of Words, and, most recently, Descartes' Baby: How the Science of Child Development Explains What Makes Us Human.