Focus on Psychology: A Guide to Mastering Peter Gray's Psychology

This product was sent within two to three days (as I requested for express mail) and the quality is excellent.

The book has interesting visuals, set-up for taking notes, and covers a wide range of what is contained in the history and present of the study of the mind in relation to the body. I think it will definitely help me in my entry-level Psychology course.

I thought this text was great--it provides information in a very clear and well-explained manner for the student who has never taken a psychology course before. Gray proves he has a sense of humor as well, injecting funny lines every now and then. It provides a lot of pertinent information in an interesting manner, and covers everything from theories on development and society to cognition and neuroscience. After finishing my intro psych class I even found myself wishing I could still use the text for my other classes (in fact I still refer to it every now and then).

As an Intro Psych instructor, I reviewed dozens of psychology texts. Gray's "Psychology" is clearly the best. First, because it is written by a single author, it maintains a consistent style and viewpoint throughout--that is, the application of evolutionary biology and cognitive science to the study of the mind and behavior. Consequently, he does not shy away from putting forward strong arguments where they are needed. On this, see especially his superb discussion of the fall of behaviorism and the rise of cognitivism.Second, the author has a powerful command of several lines of important research, and he uses this to "smarten up" the text to make it *more* understandable. As an example, see particularly his discussions of the heritability of intelligence.Third, the text is beautifully organized. The text does, however, suffer from two small weaknesses: the discussion of self-esteem owes too much to James, with James' errors especially, and the discussion of mental health and happiness needlessly bore little imprint from the chapters on cognition.Still, Gray produced a superlative volume.

If truth be told, I do not even like psychology, and feel contemt of some sort for it.I took it this semester to fulfill my humanity requirement.Nevertheless, I cannot deny that this book is wonderfully written, and it was a true pleasure reading it ! Peter Gray is obviously very fond of psychology, as well as of teaching it.It was much fun reading a book written so sensitively and with so much enthusiasm. I know many universities assign this book and am therefore surprised only one person reviewed it so far.