This excellent book combines several ideas I'd read before in ways I hadn't seen. First is the idea of what Coates calls pre-conscious thought. This is the finding of modern neuroscience that a lot of our "thinking" actually happens instinctively and without our conscious awareness. We evolved in conditions where we sometimes had to respond instantly to shadows in the forest or sudden noises and couldn't afford the time it took to consciously evaluate the threat. There is a whole host of automatic responses that our bodies make to prepare us to fight or flee, including changes in breathing and heart rates, and, importantly for this book, hormone levels. Second is a counter-idea really. Western thought holds that the mind and the body are separate. From Plato to Descartes, we generally believe consciousness is somehow separate and distinct from the animal bodies that house our brains. Coates argues, after Aristotle, that our minds and bodies are inextricably intertwined, that what affects one affects the other. Linking back to our basic fight-or-flight responses, Coates argues that the hormonal changes that ready our bodies to respond to threats (and opportunities) also affect our brains and therefore affect the way we think. He says this is particularly important for modern society, where the dangers we face are rarely physical but are instead intellectual. He focuses on modern financial trading floors where market jitters can trigger those primitive fight-or-flight responses. They make traders either more risk-seeking or more risk-averse, depending on how the markets are doing. The decisions traders make can build on themselves and cause the "irrational exuberance" or "irrational pessimism" that in turn cause market bubbles and crashes. Economic theory assumes that we are rational beings who carefully study market conditions and set prices and make trades accordingly. Coates argues that our physical state interacts with our mental state and causes us to behave irrationally, making poor decisions and amplifying market trends to extreme highs or lows. Although this book is geared to the effect of biology on financial decision-making, the discussion applies to any situations where we face prolonged stimulation and/or stress. The text is somewhat technical but is very well-written and relatively easy to understand. The affects of the mind-body connection are described through fictional stories about market traders; although most readers won't be familiar with this environment, the stories are told simply and powerfully and illustrate very well the points Coates is making. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in the effects of short-term and long-term stress on the body/mind.