Capture: Reviews

“Capture definies a shape of human experience that seems to inform everything from the smallest action to the largest life aim, a unified-field theory of human activity that draws in how we form thoughts, manage trauma, and even try to reconcile will and cause.” —Chris Ware, author of Building Stories

“Capture is a breakthrough book. It takes a particular gift to cut across neuroscience, psychiatry, philosophy, and psychology and to ask the fundamental question: Why do we allow our best selves to torpedoed by thoughts and actions that sink us? His answer is profound, life-changing, and life-saving.” —Abraham Verghese, MD, author of Cutting for Stone

“In this richly documented, beautifully written, and original work, David Kessler has given us an idea that explains one of the most strange and most powerful processes in the human brain.” —E. O. Wilson, University Professor Emeritus, Harvard University

“Kessler writes about the concept of Capture, or forces that strongly influence the mind, overriding reason and will. Invoking novelists, Freudian drives, and current neuroscience, Kessler explains how Capture motivates, clarifies thoughts, and provides insight. A challenging and rewarding book for both scholars and lay readers.” —Library Journal

“Kessler’s cogent argument is that a great deal of the apparently inexplicable behavior is the result of impulses, drives, and obsessions that may share fundamental neural and psychodynamic mechanisms. This carefully researched book is both startling and engaging, and written with brio.” —Andrew Solomon, National Book Award-winning author of The Noonday Demon

“This book offers a bold, overarching explanation for many of the great problems of the mind, problems that are often merely named. Dr. Kessler writes persuasively and with unusual clarity. Capture is an engrossing book, impressive in its cultural as well as its scientific reach.” —Tracy Kidder, New York Times best-selling and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Mountains Beyond Mountains and The Soul of a New Machine