This coming week we’ll be giving away an autographed copy of Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique by Michael S. Gazzaniga.

Gazzaniga is the director of UC Santa Barbara’s SAGE Center for the Study of the Mind. His new book is an engaging (and easy reading) exploration of the latest research into the intricacies of the human condition. As Andrew Newberg writes in the NY Sun:

Have you ever wondered why you are different from other animals? Why do people form strong social bonds and organize themselves into large groups? How have we developed ways to understand what somebody else is actually thinking? Why do we have art and morality? What is it, exactly, that makes us human?

This last is the complex question that neuroscientist Michael Gazzaniga addresses in “Human: The Science Behind What Makes Us Unique” (Ecco, 447 pages, $27.50). The book is an intellectual romp through the cognitive neurosciences, an attempt to bring everyone up to date about what we know about who we are. Interspersed with discussion of some of these intricate matters of scientific inquiry are a number of charming and intriguing questions — such as whether you would want to go on a date with a chimpanzee (probably not, if you value good conversation) and why the right side of your brain appears to be much dumber than the left (the left side is something of an intellectual factory, a workhouse generating connections, while the right is a kind of neurological academy, home to patient logic).

Publisher’s Weekly gives Human a starred review, noting that Gazzaniga is “adept at aiding even the scientifically unsophisticated to grasp his arguments about what separates humans from other animals.”

Book Excerpt: “I always smile when I hear Garrison Keillor say, `Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.’ It is such a simple sentiment, yet so full of human complexity. Other apes don’t have that sentiment. Think about it. Our species does like to wish people well, not harm. No one ever says, `Have a bad day’ or `Do bad work,’ and keeping in touch is what the cell-phone industry has discovered all of us do, even when there is nothing going on…” Keep reading here.

Interview: Tom Wolfe and Michael Gazzaniga discuss status, free will, and the human condition in a Q & A for Seed Magazine.

Book tour: Check out upcoming Human events here.

The CaliforniaAuthors Book Lotto: If you’d like to enter our book giveaway, please use our contact form to send us your name and e-mail address. Put “Human” in the subject line. We’ll select a winner at random on Monday, July 27.