Eric R. Kandel: In Search of Memory (Norton, 2006)

You can’t give Kandel enough credit for the clear and concise way he refines the concepts of various mental functions that some believe are accessible only through introspection in such a way as to direct biochemical research of higher functions. Observation and experiment will reveal the biochemical analogues of behaviors and mental states, but proper experiments require a good definition of these behaviors and mental states and a division of our concepts of different mental events into clearly understood units so that workable experiments can be performed. And one can forgive him a lot because of the horrors of his childhood. But really, the view of his personal life that he shows is so tedious and so bourgeois that one can almost hear the grandfather clock ticking in the entryway.