(Image: Fourth Estate)
PLEASURE may serve a useful evolutionary purpose, but the pursuit of it can lead us far astray. , who has previously written about happiness, sleep and the effect of mind on health, begins his ambitious new book in thrall to our capacity to over-indulge, in particular the wild sexual depravities of successive Roman emperors. The book’s subtitle rather undersells it – or oversells it, depending on your point of view: it is as much about the history, culture and politics of pleasure as it is the biology, psychology and neuroscience.
This bear-hug approach to a subject can…
