This is a second book by the author and also neuroscientist David J. Linden (though I never had the chance to read his first book: The Accidental Mind: How Brain Evolution Has Given Us Love, Memory, Dreams, and God). It touches upon the pursuit of pleasure by man and how such pursuits can become compulsive and ultimately lead to addiction. He makes a point. Too much pleasure is replaced by desire while liking becomes wanting. It maybe well-explained and not so much dumbed down but it is still rather a challenging book to read because there is hardcore biology inside.
He explains much on how we pursuit pleasure in many ways. We spend a tremendous amount of our time and resources pursuing them. Pleasure being a key motivator of our lives is a keen to learning; we find food, water and sex in order to survive as a species.
There's commentaries on gambling, drugs, meditation, exercise, spicy food, fast food, smoking, giving to charity and how they can all be linked to pleasure and in extreme cases: addiction. Some things activate a lot of our pleasure circuit and is carries a substantial risk of addiction (heroin, cocaine & certain medical drugs). Others carry little or no risk of addiction such as alcohol, smoking cannabis (weed), smoking tobacco or gambling simply because they weakly activate the pleasure circuit. However they can have the same effect as the first if done too frequently. He explains it all with his abundant use of personal anecdotes and penetrating observations.
Still some his commentary made it difficult to comprehend. One good example can be found here along the lines of "The author argues that addiction is a disease and addicts should not be held responsible. Because they are blameless victims of e.g. heart disease they should however be ultimately be responsible for their own recovery." Huh? He argues that some individuals have greater risk to addiction due to their genetic makeup and he tries to expose the science behind our vices and virtues.
It's roughly 200 pages thick and I finished it in two days, it was pleasurable to read but don't try to read when you feel sleepy :) Overall I would recommend this book to anyone who loves non-fiction titles with a touch of biology plus if you like watching documentaries like Discovery Channel's Curiosity.
Happy Reading!!~!
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