The Age of Insight

In Vienna in 1900, five of the best minds in the world were working--separately--on the same problem: how to understand the human mind, the unconscious. What causes our instincts, thoughts, and emotions, including our darker ones? Great thinkers from all fields, from psychology to painting, from Sigmund Freud to Gustave Klimt, were focused on these central questions, at the same time in the same place: Vienna 1900. In this extraordinary book, Nobel Prize-winner and media personality Eric Kandel delves brilliantly into the mysteries of the mind, showing how science and art formed--and continue to form--an invaluable alliance in helping us to understand ourselves. Kandel takes us into the intellectual culture that fostered the discoveries that led to brain science today.