A Bibliography of Sorts for "Sleepwalking Toward Bethlehem"
"Further Reading" would be more apropos.
Further Reading for readers of “Sleepwalking Towards Bethlehem: On What We Know But Do Not Believe” (The Missouri Review, Summer 2026)
Books Discussed in the Essay
Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. By Robert M. Sapolsky. New York: Penguin Press, 2017.
Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will. By Robert M. Sapolsky. New York: Penguin Press, 2023.
Why Zebras Don’t Get Ulcers. By Robert M. Sapolsky. New York: W. H. Freeman, 1994.
Free Will. By Sam Harris. New York: Free Press, 2012.
Free Will and Illusion. By Saul Smilansky. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000. Source of “We are fortunately deceived about free will” and the “hothouse of illusion” line.
Just Deserts: Debating Free Will. By Gregg D. Caruso and Daniel C. Dennett. Cambridge: Polity Press, 2021. Three extended exchanges between a leading compatibilist (Dennett) and a leading free-will skeptic (Caruso) — the best short introduction to why these two camps disagree even when they agree.
Rejecting Retributivism: Free Will, Punishment, and Criminal Justice. By Gregg D. Caruso. Law and the Cognitive Sciences series. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2021. Caruso’s fuller case for what a justice system without retributivism might look like — relevant to the essay’s discussion of prison reform as a “logical implication” of denial.
Beyond Good and Evil. By Friedrich Nietzsche. Translated by Walter Kaufmann. New York: Vintage Books, 1966. Source of the “logical rape and perversion” line on the causa sui.
Freedom within Reason. By Susan Wolf. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990. Source of the compatibilist claim that free action must “stem from values determined by reason.”
Incognito: The Secret Lives of the Brain. By David Eagleman. New York: Pantheon, 2011. Background for Eagleman’s comments on impulse control and criminogenesis.
A Companion to Free Will. Edited by Joseph Keim Campbell, Kristin M. Mickelson, and V. Alan White. Wiley-Blackwell Companions to Philosophy. Hoboken, NJ: Wiley-Blackwell, 2023. Includes Shaun Nichols’s chapter on how folk concepts like “free will” might shift — the “witch” vs. “whale” framework.
Journal Articles and Studies Cited
“The Value of Believing in Free Will: Encouraging a Belief in Determinism Increases Cheating.” By Kathleen D. Vohs and Jonathan W. Schooler. Psychological Science 19, no. 1 (2008): 49–54. doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9280.2008.02045.x
“Do Conscious Thoughts Cause Behavior?” By Roy F. Baumeister, E. J. Masicampo, and Kathleen D. Vohs. Annual Review of Psychology 62 (2011): 331–361. doi.org/10.1146/annurev.psych.093008.131126
“Poverty Impedes Cognitive Function.” By Anandi Mani, Sendhil Mullainathan, Eldar Shafir, and Jiaying Zhao. Science 341, no. 6149 (2013): 976–980. doi.org/10.1126/science.1238041
“Unconscious Determinants of Free Decisions in the Human Brain.” By Chun Siong Soon, Marcel Brass, Hans-Jochen Heinze, and John-Dylan Haynes. Nature Neuroscience 11 (2008): 543–545. doi.org/10.1038/nn.2112 — the original fMRI button-press study (six seconds, ~60% accuracy).
“Internally Generated Preactivation of Single Neurons in Human Medial Frontal Cortex Predicts Volition.” By Itzhak Fried, Roy Mukamel, and Gabriel Kreiman. Neuron 69 (2011): 548–562. doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2010.11.045 — the single-neuron (non-fMRI) replication the essay describes reaching ~80% accuracy at ~700 milliseconds.
“Undermining Free Will.” By Paul Davies. Foreign Policy, September/October 2004 (part of the special report “The World’s Most Dangerous Ideas”). foreignpolicy.com/2009/10/23/undermining-free-will —
Reviews of Determined (for readers who want a second opinion on Sapolsky)
"Review of Determined: A Science of Life without Free Will, by Robert Sapolsky.” By Nikhil Krishnan. The New Yorker, November 13, 2023 issue. Draws heavily on P. F. Strawson’s “Freedom and Resentment” to push back on Sapolsky’s hard determinism. newyorker.com/magazine/2023/11/13/determined-a-science-of-life-…
“Determined: Life Without Free Will by Robert Sapolsky Review – The Hard Science of Decisions.” By Oliver Burkeman. The Guardian, October 24, 2023. theguardian.com/books/2023/oct/24/determined-life-without-free-…
“’The Clockwork Universe’: Is Free Will an Illusion?” By Oliver Burkeman. The Guardian, April 27, 2021. The long read describing the death threats Galen Strawson received over his free-will denial. theguardian.com/news/2021/apr/27/the-clockwork-universe-is-free…