"The eye is the soul's camera," writes Simon Ings in his investigation of the sense of sight, A Natural History of Seeing: The Art and Science of Vision (Norton), "and the ophthalmoscope reaches in to spy upon the soul." How does the eye, advance scout for the brain, absorb information from the wider world? How does a subtle shift of attention betray our lying hearts? Why does our unblinking fixation on such technological marvels as computer screens threaten to literally blind us as a species? Ings' voracious curiosity about the physics—and psychology—of vision, ranging across history, biology, philosophy, and myth, makes this book a brilliantly lucid read.