Some of our biggest decisions are made without conscious awareness, argues Washington Post columnist Shankar Vedantam in The Hidden Brain (Spiegel & Grau, 2010). Using powerful case studies, Vedantam examines with a light touch unconscious bias and sexism; why we seem to care more about animal welfare than genocide; and how decisions taken by those on the 88th and 89th floors of the World Trade Center's South Tower on 11 September 2001 determined whether they lived or died.

Practising what he preaches, journalist Jeff Wise jumped out of a plane and was fired on by missiles while researching his book Extreme Fear (Palgrave Macmillan, 2009). Taking a hands-on approach, Wise offers a series of gripping tales to illustrate how our brains function when we are exposed to mortal danger and how we can learn to control anxiety. Using the experiences of people who have averted lion attacks, wildfires and plane crashes, as well as of stage performers and top athletes, Wise explains how to stay cool under pressure.

From why we kiss to how religious we are, we can't escape our evolutionary history, explains anthropologist Robin Dunbar in How Many Friends Does One Person Need? (Faber & Faber, 2010). With clear descriptions of groundbreaking experiments in evolutionary biology aimed at a popular audience, he explains why all babies are born premature, the science behind lonely hearts columns and why, even in the era of Facebook, we can never be acquainted with more than 150 people.