Stories pervade our daily lives, from human interest news items, to a business strategy described to a colleague, to daydreams between chores. Stories are what we use to make sense of the world. But how does this work?

In Making Stories, the eminent psychologist Jerome Bruner examines this pervasive human habit and suggests new and deeper ways to think about how we use stories to make sense of lives and the great moral and psychological problems that animate them. Looking at legal cases and autobiography as well as literature, Bruner warns us not to be seduced by overly tidy stories and shows how doubt and double meaning can lie beneath the most seemingly simple case.

"The best books have the capacity to change lives, sometimes by the sheer force of ideas communicated with felicity and grace. Bruner's short, compelling work Making Stories is just such a book. Bruner [makes] sharply visible what otherwise could be only indistinctly felt. He trains his searchlight on the complex and diverse uses not only of the conventional, easily recognized stories of myth and literature, but also of obscure stories, those found...buried within our culture, our institutions and ourselves." - Los Angeles Times Book Review