The Hundredth man

How is it that we can recognize photos from our high school yearbook decades later, but cannot remember what we ate for breakfast yesterday? And why are we inclined to buy more cans of soup if the sign says “LIMIT 12 PER CUSTOMER” rather than “LIMIT 4 PER CUSTOMER?” In Kluge, Gary Marcus argues convincingly that our minds are not as elegantly designed as we may believe. The imperfections result from a haphazard evolutionary process that often proceeds by piling new systems on top of old ones—and those systems don’t always work well together. The end product is a “kluge,” a clumsy, cobbled-together contraption. Taking us on a tour of the essential areas of human experience—memory, belief, decision making, language, and happiness—Marcus unveils a fundamentally new way of looking at the evolution of the human mind and simultaneously sheds light on some of the most mysterious aspects of human nature.

They kidnapped him in a small town In Brazil. He had changed his name and his appearance, but they were sure they had their man.

Four years before, he had been called Patrick S. Lanigan. He had died in a car crash in February 1992. His gravestone lay in a cemetery in Biloxi, Mississippi. He had been a partner at an up and coming law firm, had a pretty wife, a new daughter, and a bright future. Six weeks after his death, $90 million had disappeared from the law firm. It was then that his partners knew he was still alive.

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