**edited 01/27/14 
 When I first saw this book, I knew I had to read it. Not only is it written by an author I've already had a positive experience with (The Drunkard's Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives), but the book had one of the funniest cover designs I've seen all year. In black text on a green background, it says, "Subliminal: How Your Unconscious Mind Rules Your Behavior." In the spaces in between, in green only slightly lighter than the background, it says, "Psst: Hey There, Yes: You, Sexy. Buy This Book Now. You Know You Want It." I laughed when I saw it and obeyed--well, not to the point of buying it, but I did pick it up. 
 I dove in eagerly, only to be brought to an abrupt and unpleasant halt in the first chapter. There's nothing that irritates me more than bad science, and the misapplication of statistics is on my permanent hit list. One of Mlodinow's examples of the importance of the subconscious is (according to him) that we are more attracted to people who share our last name. As "evidence", he provides a chart of raw counts of husband-wife surnames over three states which indicates that a Jones is more likely to marry a Jones even though Smiths are more common. My problem? Well, this is a perfect example of Bad Statistics: he grabs a convenient weak correlation over a ridiculously tiny sample, ignores all potential confounding variables (e.g. names aren't uniformly distributed: even though the overall population of Jones are smaller, a Jones may be more likely to meet another Jones than a Smith; last names indicate ethnicity and nationality and we know people have strong homophilous preferences that have nothing to do with melodious surnames, etc, etc.), and then extrapolates an outrageously broad and demonstrably inaccurate causal conclusion (this data indicates that we are subconsciously attracted to people who share our names). I put the book down in disgust. 
 And so the story ends, until one day, I ran across a version of the book on audio, read by none other than Mlodinow himself. I decided to give the book one more chance. I'm glad I did. 
 ... 
 Due to my disapproval of GR's new and rather subjective review deletion policy, the rest of this review can be found on Booklikes.