Ambition, genius, thought, imagination, love, hatred, greed and, above all, consciousness of ourselves as alive and as part of our world — all this is somehow enabled by the brain. The brain is the person, and if it goes wrong, a person can be  ruined. This book is about part of what the brain does, a role of which many of us are hardly aware, but one that has ensured the survival of mankind. Despite famine, drought, wars, cold, infections and hostile environments, we survive as a species, though not always as individuals. throughout our history, our brains have been coping with what fate throws at us — a process that some call adaptation. How does the brain do it? How does it know what’s needed? How does it enable us to meet that need? How much do we depend on our own brains, or on those of others?

This book is different from other books on the brain.  It deals with the brain’s role in survival, rather than ‘higher’ cognitive functions (such as language or thought) though discussing how primeval and evolutionarily more recent functions have to interact in man.  It describes how there is a special part of the brain that keeps you alive: for example, makes you hungry when you need energy, thirsty when you need water, drives you to reproduce so that your species survives, makes you fearful of things or individuals that might harm you, and defends you against adversity.  
Each chapter is profusely illustrated with both scientific and literary quotations.

Scientific quotes give the reader some experience of what scientists actually say, and the evidence on which each chapter is based. Literary quotes illustrate the real problems of survival, stress and adaptation to adversity  as portrayed by novelists, poets and other non-scientific writers. Novelists and poets are much better than scientists at depicting life in all its variety; since this book is concerned about how the brain represents and deals with the vicissitudes of those lives, I have used their skill to show what it is I am trying to explain. 

The book is written in an accessible style, similar to articles in Scientific American, New Scientist or the New York Review of Books  It’s intended for the non-specialist reader interested in knowing about some of the recent exciting advances in this area of brain research.

On the following pages you will find a brief summary of each chapter, together with excerpts from the text, and some examples of the scientific and literary quotations that accompany it (the latter are in italics).