The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity--and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race
Description
2020 Next Generation Indie Book Awards Winner - Science Category
2018 Forward Indies Finalist - Psychology Category
Why are we obsessed with the things we want only to be bored when we get them?
Why is addiction perfectly logical to an addict?
Why does love change so quickly from passion to indifference?
Why are some people die-hard liberals and others hardcore conservatives?
Why are we always hopeful for solutions even in the darkest times—and so good at figuring them out?
The answer is found in a single chemical in your brain: dopamine. Dopamine ensured the survival of early man. Thousands of years later, it is the source of our most basic behaviors and cultural ideas—and progress itself.
Dopamine is the chemical of desire that always asks for more—more stuff, more stimulation, and more surprises. In pursuit of these things, it is undeterred by emotion, fear, or morality. Dopamine is the source of our every urge, that little bit of biology that makes an ambitious business professional sacrifice everything in pursuit of success, or that drives a satisfied spouse to risk it all for the thrill of someone new. Simply put, it is why we seek and succeed; it is why we discover and prosper. Yet, at the same time, it's why we gamble and squander.
From dopamine's point of view, it's not the having that matters. It's getting something—anything—that's new. From this understanding—the difference between possessing something versus anticipating it—we can understand in a revolutionary new way why we behave as we do in love, business, addiction, politics, religion—and we can even predict those behaviors in ourselves and others.
In The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity—and will Determine the Fate of the Human Race, George Washington University professor and psychiatrist Daniel Z. Lieberman, MD, and Georgetown University lecturer Michael E. Long present a potentially life-changing proposal: Much of human life has an unconsidered component that explains an array of behaviors previously thought to be unrelated, including why winners cheat, why geniuses often suffer with mental illness, why nearly all diets fail, and why the brains of liberals and conservatives really are different.
Praise for The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity--and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race
"Daniel Lieberman and Michael Long have pulled off an amazing feat. They have made a biography of a neurotransmitter a riveting read. Once you understand the power and peril of dopamine, you'll better understand the human condition itself."
—Daniel H. Pink, author of Drive and When
"Meet a molecule whose fingerprint rests upon every aspect of human nature—from desire and drugs to politics and progress. Lieberman and Long tell the epic saga of dopamine as a page-turner that you simply can't put down."
—David Eagleman, PhD, neuroscientist at Stanford and New York Times bestselling author
"I've worked as an artist for forty years, and the question ‘Why am I like this?' has been a puzzle, a mystery, a plea, and an occasional cry to the heavens. Lieberman and Long have created a road map for all those wrestling between insatiable longing and the here and now."
—Thomas F. Wilson, actor and comedian
"Why do we crave what we don't have rather than feel good about what we do—and why do fools fall in love? Haunting questions of human biology are answered by The Molecule of More, a must-read about the human condition."
—Gregg Easterbrook, author of It's Better Than It Looks
"As a guy who creates musical stuff for a living and reads science books for kicks, I was doubly hooked by The Molecule of More. Lieberman and Long lay out the astoundingly wide-ranging effects of dopamine with nimble metaphors and fat-free sentences. And the research linking creativity and madness, with dopamine as the hidden culprit—let's just say it hit home. Reading each chapter, I felt myself fitting a key smoothly into a locked door, opening onto a fresh-yet-familiar room."
—Robbie Fulks, Grammy-nominated recording artist
"Jim Watson, who deciphered the genetic code, famously said, ‘There are only molecules; the rest is sociology,' adding fuel to C. P. Snow's complaint that Science and the humanities are two fundamentally different "cultures" which will never meet. The authors argue provocatively, yet convincingly, that the molecule that allows us to bridge the chasm between them is dopamine. Though written for ordinary people, the narrative is sprinkled throughout with dazzling new insights that will appeal equally to specialists."
—V.S. Ramachandran, PhD, professor at the University of California, San Diego, and at Salk Institute and author of TheEmerging Mind
