Only borrowed it because I was desperate for something to read on my phone. Despite my interest in the subject area, I found this hard to get into. Formatting issues with the ebook didn't help. Not something I'd recommend on the topic.

3.5

So the content, the theory, the anecdotes, the science all interesting. But the actual writing is not engaging and frequently repetitive. Honestly, had it been better written, it probably would have been the length of a novella. Still, as a science book, it was pretty informative about the criminal psychopath.

This book was a little disappointing because it’s really as much about the current state of neurology and psychology as much as it is about understanding what is different about the minds of killers. Sociopathy is just kind of used as a theme to link the information in different chapters together. The author often goes on very long tangents, for example taking several pages to explain how an MRI works or to explain the pressure to publish or perish and how it forces scientists to limit themselves to short studies instead of doing the kind of in-depth work that would yield better information. It's frustrating because after these long tangents he will sometimes only touch on what that has to do with the theme of the book before flying off to another topic.

Interesting but disorganized, this book offers a summary of many different ideas without offering a real opinion on any of them.

A fascinating book that explores the science of the brains of psychopaths. It's amazing how little we still know about the human brain or about people who display psychopathic traits. Despite complicated content, it was a fairly easier than expected read and I felt like I learned a lot.

Fascinating read about psychopathy and how it originates, how it is characterized, how it develops, and it's causes. Combined with the addition of interesting but unsettling examples of real life cases highlight how important and influential research into psychopathy is. Critically it was a bit repetitive on occasions but it was an interesting read, easily understandable for a casual reader but provided further reading that I will hopefully venture into. I would definitely recommend it to those interested in understanding psychopaths and the study of them.