Steven Pinker's ten desert island books

Steven Pinker is a Johnstone Family Professor in the Department of Psychology at Harvard University. He conducts research on language and cognition, writes for publications such as the New York Times, Time and The Atlantic. His books including The Language Instinct, How the Mind Works, The Blank Slate, The Stuff of Thought, The Better Angels of Our Nature, The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century, and Enlightenment Now: The Case for Reason, Science, Humanism, and Progress.

One of his ten favorite books, as shared at Vulture.com:

“Enemies: A Love Story,” by Isaac Bashevis Singer

Perhaps my favorite contemporary novel by someone I’m not married to. It’s about a Holocaust survivor who ends up with three wives. Every scene is a gold mine of insight about human nature.

Read about the other entries on the list.

--Marshal Zeringue