One think I have recently learned when it comes to recommending books is to point out the obvious: I have a different level of personal experience and knowledge about the topic, so the books I liked is often the result of my personal experience and the kind of books I usually like.
I am a fan of dry, no-nonsense, non-fiction books. So I don't think its very surprising that I often don't enjoy pop-psych books because they tend to dumb down the science and use selective knowledge to get readers hooked into the topic. Hard science is rarely a priority in those kind of books, its the personal narrative and interpretation they want to push that takes precedence over actual science.
This is why I often read books thats written by people who have good background knowledge on the topic and is a professional on that field. Which means I try to avoid books written by General "sciency" guy who has an interest in many things and read some books on those things and he is just rehashing and reinterpreting those words the way he likes it to sell as many books as he can.
I am fairly new to Neuro/psych books. So I don't have an extensive list of books I have already read. However I do have a fairly good list of books on my queue that I have collected over the last few weeks from other professionals neuropsychologists on the field.
- Anything by Antonio Damasio (just started reading "The Feeling of What Happens", loving it.)
- Books by Daniel Dennett
- Books by Joseph Ledoux
- Books by Oliver Sacks
- Subcortical Structure and Cognition (needs some neurology background, I have none. I am slowly building myself up to reading it)
- The Neuroscience of Religious Experience
- Phantoms of the Brain
Note that all the books or authors I have recommended are either psychologists or neuropsychologists by profession (AFAIK), unlike Lehrer, who is a science journalist with interest in psychology. When you read a hardcore no-nonsense Neuropsychology book (ie, Damasio) and then compare it to lehrer, I think you will see the glaring difference in knowledge and substance.
What do you think of Richard Granger? I've read several of his papers (Essential Circuits of Cognition, Engines of the Brain), and as a non-neuroscientist his hierarchical model seems interesting and plausible, and more importantly from my point of view, computationally feasible.
