TED Books

"Abstraction — lumping, chunking, categorizing a number of simple concepts into a single, more complex concept (such as using the word "alphabet" to describe any collection of letters that serve as building blocks for words) — was one of the initial elements of culture (together with social learning, language, and mimesis)."

Check out this great ebook from TED Books. You can find this title, and the entire TED Books lineup, at ted.com/tedbooks.