The brain may be the seat of consciousness and the engine of all human experience, but it’s also messy, fallible, and disorganized. For example, did you know that your memory is egotistical? That conspiracy theories and superstitions are the inevitable effects of a healthy brain? Or that alcohol can actually improve your memory? (Editor’s note: please read the book before testing that last conclusion.) In Idiot Brain, Dr. Dean Burnett celebrates blind spots, blackouts, insomnia, and all the other downright laughable things our minds do to us, while also exposing the many mistakes we’ve made in our quest to understand how our brains actually work. This is the best kind of popular science-lucid, funny, and whip-smart-from a debut author who will be tickling funny bones and firing neurons for a long time to come.