Book from psychologist Roy Baumeister tops The New York Times' best-seller list

Francis Eppes Professor of Psychology Roy Baumeister grabbed national attention in the latter part of 2011 by placing a new book at the top of The New York Times's best-seller list. It was also selected as one of Amazon’s Best Books of 2011.

The book, titled, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, received positive reviews from The Times’s Sunday Book Review as well as National Public Radio and the website The Daily Beast.

Co-written by New York Times science writer John Tierney, the book examines the human capacity for willpower, particularly how it is depleted and how it can be sustained.

Roy Baumeister

Baumeister’s laboratory findings, which date back to the 1990s, led him to several unique discoveries on the subject, including the idea that willpower is strengthened by maintaining an appropriate level of glucose in the bloodstream. He also established that self-control is available to people in a limited, though renewable, quantity—a concept Baumeister calls ego-depletion.

“This was something quite new to the field,” Baumeister says, “in the way we were thinking about the self—and even the way I had understood it.” For the complete story, visit http://news.fsu.edu/More-FSU-News/News-Archive/2011/September/The-greatest-human-strength-Believe-it-or-not-it-s-willpower