a pretty accessible, albeit at times oversimplified and somewhat logic-leaping, exploration of human behaviour structured around the seven deadly sins, aka literally why we do things that we shouldn't, but also are they that bad in the first place?

while i found the overall theme and construction of the book interesting, i think a lot of it failed to investigate the science and psychology beyond surface level. it felt more like a recount of existing analysis in a report organised for people to read in a more self-help kind of way, which, still, lacked a lot of meat in terms of actually providing advice. a lot of the cases used are already pretty well known (e.g. the sexual deviant who had a brain tumour and was fine as soon as it was operated out, etc) so i personally didn't feel like there was much new being brought to the table.

i dont think this was a bad book necessarily? it laid out the information that it said it would so i suppose it succeeded in that aspect. there were definitely some dubious arguments put forward regarding food and eating which i think was just a bit irresponsible of the author to have put without further nuance regarding eating disorders. i think what bothers me about purported self help psychology books sometimes is that they draw unhelpful conclusions on how you should be living your life based on evidence that could lead to a multitude of different routes based on the lifestyles people lead. but i dont think the advice in this book was outrageous in its chain of reasoning as much as it was just lazy and surface level. it seems like mr jack lewis wanted to cash his cheque and move on lol