What is it about human brains that makes some people more capable than others? In this critical account, Professor Ian Deary reviews historical, cognitive, and biological research on the foundations of human mental ability. Where most previous accounts of intelligence have examined how human mental ability can predict success in education, work, and social life, few books have taken as a starting point mental ability (and individual differences in intelligence), and attempted to see what factors could have influenced, and have even predicted mental ability.
