Prologue: The Habit Cure Summary and Analysis

Lisa Allen spent much of her early life as a smoker, and she also battled obesity and was deeply in debt by her twenties. However, in a small number of years she managed to turn her life around completely. A number of social and behavioral scientists have taken great interest in her ability to profoundly change her life. She's given up smoking, lost weight by taking up running, is studying for a Master's degree and owns a home. She explains that her life changed when she had a mental breakdown while visiting Cairo. She decided that she needed a reason to live, and resolves to return to the same place next year to travel through the desert. Neurologists who have studied her brain discovered that her new habits have overridden and overpowered her old ones...