Dr. Kandel has put together an insightful, lucid, and digestible overview of some of the prototypical neurological and neuropsychological disorders, and utilizes this perspective to describe some of what we know about normal brain functioning and anatomy. Almost anyone with any background in neuroscience, neurology, psychology, or psychiatry will know of, and has been impacted by Dr. Kandel. At least when I was training in the 90s, he was the lead author of the main textbook, Principles of Neuroscience, by Kandel, Schwartz, and Jessell. It was superbly comprehensive and I still have it and actually still use it. Dr. Kandel is renowned for his work on memory and the short-term and long-term potentiation of neuronal circuits. That being said, as far as I can tell, this work is very accessible to the general public. His final few chapters bring together a synthesis of ideas with far-reaching societal implications about gender equality, free will, consciousness, criminal justice, and other topics which he feels might eventually lead to a new approach to scientific humanism. I would agree that the more these ideas are popularized and make their way into the cultural mainstream, the better our chances of utilizing science to guide rational policy decisions. Unfortunately, I am a little skeptical that we are ready to consider human nature from this perspective, as of yet.