This first book is actually a collection of articles, most of which were originally published in The New York Times Magazine. Some of these articles can be found on the Articles page of this site.

The question this books asks is: Why do people behave the way they do? In the articles collected in Body, Mind, Behavior, Scarf highlights the frontiers of research in human behavior: When does a fetus become a person? What leads a woman to attempt suicide? How much do sex hormones contribute to behavior? How do you define sanity and madness? What is a hangover? (Surprisingly, no one really knows.)

Guided by a fascination with how and why we humans behave as we do, Scarf looks for answers in areas that extend from biomedicine to sociology to psychoanalysis. The experiments and technical breakthroughs she discovers are translated for the reader into language that is both readily understood and relevant to everyday life.

Scarf also interviews the people who were carrying on the most exciting work in behavioral science in the 1970s: Jane Goodall, famed for her work with chimpanzees in the Gombe Preserve; Jose Delgado, whose experiments in brain stimulation would, one day, he hoped, help to construct "happier, less destructive, better balanced" people; John Bowlby, the English psychoanalyst who looked to ethology for insight into human attachment; Thomas Szasz, who claimed that normality is a square circle or a four-sided triangle; and R. D. Laing, psychiatrist, philosopher, prophet, social critic, and cult leader.