Beach blanket brain reading

In the summer, not everyone likes to slather their brains with beach novels. Say you loved Malcolm Gladwell's Blink and can't wait for his next slice of psychological angelfood cake. You've come to the right place—not only am I going to set you up, I'm going to set you up with something better (that's right: I didn't like Gladwell's best seller). Coming this month is Cordelia Fine's A Mind of Its Own: How Your Brain Distorts and Deceives (Norton), which our reviewer embraced for its entertaining demystification of how we trick ourselves into being more self-serving and vain, among other things. July has two juicy offerings: Allan Pease and Barbara Pease's international smash The Definitive Book of Body Language (Bantam) deciphers gestures across cultures and contexts, and Joseph Epstein's Friendship: An Exposé (Houghton) tackles a little-explored yet crucial area of humanity (chicks will dig it). Finally, although it came out last fall, I can't help plugging Gregory Berns's Satisfaction: The Science of Finding True Fulfillment (Holt) and Jonathan Haidt's early spring entry, The Happiness Hypothesis: Finding Modern Truth In Ancient Wisdom (Basic). Getting happy is the basis of every self-help book published; these books get to the heart of what being happy means.—Heather McCormack