Why do we laugh? What makes memories fade? Why do people believe in ghosts? How the Mind Works explores every aspect of mental life, showing that our minds are not a mystery, but a system of organs of computation designed by natural selection.

Originally published in hardcover: [London]: Allen Lane, an imprint of Penguin Books, 2017.

The Caucasus mountains are a land of jagged peaks and rugged people, who for over 200 years have rebelled against Russia's attempts to add them to its empire. Travelling from remote village to refugee camp, rocky mountain gorge to forgotten massacre site, the author discovers exiles, fighters, defiant survivors - and an unbreakable spirit.

At the end of the Second World War, the Soviet Union unexpectedly found itself in control of a huge swathe of territory in Eastern Europe. Stalin and his secret police set out to convert a dozen radically different countries to a completely new political and moral system: Communism.