The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love, Sex, and Creativity―and Will Determine the Fate of the Human Race

Winner of the Next Generation Indie AwardWhy are we obsessed with the things we want and bored when we get them? Why is addiction "perfectly logical" to an addict? Why does love change so quickly from passion to indifference? Why are some people diehard liberals and others hardcore conservatives? Why are we always hopeful for solutions even in the darkest times--and so good at figuring them out? The answer is found in a single chemical in your brain: dopamine. Dopamine ensured the survival of early man. Thousands of years later it is the source of our most basic behaviors and cultural ideas--and progress itself. Dopamine is the chemical of desire that always asks for more--more stuff more stimulation and more surprises. In pursuit of these things it is undeterred by emotion fear or morality. Dopamine is the source of our every urge that little bit of biology that makes an ambitious business professional sacrifice everything in pursuit of success or that drives a satisfied spouse to risk it all for the thrill of someone new. Simply put it is why we seek and succeed; it is why we discover and prosper. Yet at the same time its why we gamble and squander. From dopamines point of view its not the having that matters. Its getting something--anything--thats new. From this understanding--the difference between possessing something versus anticipating it--we can understand in a revolutionary new way why we behave as we do in love business addiction politics religion - and we can even predict those behaviors in ourselves and others. In The Molecule of More: How a Single Chemical in Your Brain Drives Love Sex and Creativity--and will Determine the Fate of the Human Race George Washington University professor and psychiatrist Daniel Z. Lieberman MD and Georgetown University lecturer Michael E. Long present a potentially life-changing proposal: Much of human life has an unconsidered component that explains an array of behaviors previously thought to be unrelated including why winners cheat why geniuses often suffer with mental illness why nearly all diets fail and why the brains of liberals and conservatives really are different.