Read Montague’s book originally titled Why Choose This Book? now titled Your Brain Is (Almost) Perfect, is an absolutely fascinating and easily accessible book on the latest in brain science.

One of the things that appealed to me a great deal about this book is that it deals with many of the fundamental aspects of the brain. First it discusses the brain (and the body) as a physical object, and how as such it must obey the laws of physics. So that means that your brain has certain power requirements that are a byproduct of the amount of energy you can supply your brain. One of the fascinating topics is why it takes so long to remember certain things, it turns out that there is an energy price to performing thought (apparently thinking is hard work after all).

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Trading Up refers to the phenomenon of “New Luxury” goods being purchased at a price point that from traditional demand curves should have a very low volume, but in fact have a very high volume. There are a couple of factors discussed that contribute to this phenomenon. The first is the wide availability of cheap commodities, which allow the middle class consumer to purchase things that they don’t really care about at a low price point (think of the Wal-mart and Costco phenomenons). This allows them to splurge in areas of importance to the individual. This effect is referred to as “rocketing” by the authors. The concept being that spending is dramatically increased in those areas of importance.