Determined

Robert Sapolsky's answer, argued across five hundred pages, is an uncompromising no. In Determined the Stanford neuroscientist contends that every choice we make is the product of causes entirely outside our control - genes, hormones, childhood, culture, the state of our neurons a second before we act - stretching back in an unbroken chain. If he is right, the implications are seismic for how we think about blame, punishment, praise and pride.

Sapolsky is a lucid, funny guide through difficult science and thornier philosophy, and he insists that abandoning the illusion of free will could make us more compassionate. intendle recommends it as a bracing intellectual provocation, even for readers who finish unconvinced; many philosophers dispute his leap from biology to metaphysics. An instant New York Times bestseller by the author of Behave, it is a serious, unsettling book about the deepest question we can ask about ourselves.