Ken B. reviewed on 7/19/2013

False advertising... I thought I was going to get a review of some of the famous psychological experiments. What I got was the author relentlessly trying to insert herself into the scenarios. Feeble attempts to recreate aspects of the experiments or to re-interpret the results according to her own biases. And many of the experiments are not even close to 'great' and some really famous ones are conspicuously absent. You wouldn't think a book about famous experiments would have have such a preponderance of first person pronouns.

In a chapter about an experiment about addiction... "I know an addict..." "I'll try to become an addict..." really? I didn't finish the last two chapters, because on the third to the last chapter I decided to skip any paragraph that started with 'I' and there was almost nothing left.

I've wanted to read this book for years and finally got around to it and I am so disappointed. This is so much more of an autobiography than scientific history. I'm going to stick to Mary Roach.

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