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Why do we like the things we like? For centuries, the question has intrigued everyone including Immanuel Kant, Virginia Woolf, and Sigmund Freud. Yet despite much scrutiny, human taste has long remained an elusive beast. Enter the Internet. Not only have music streaming apps and video-on-demand services given us a vast array of inventory to choose from, but they’ve also created an unprecedented amount of data on human choice. Might the fundamental dynamics of desire be revealed therein?

In You May Also Like: Taste in an Age of Endless Choice (Knopf; $26.95), Tom Vanderbilt sets out to demystify human appetites, exploring the forces underlying our tastes in art, music, food, baby names, even cat breeding. Along the way, he interviews sources at Netflix and Pandora. He scours academic literature on Yelp reviews. He visits the headquarters of flavoring giant McCormick. He travels to a company, NeuroFocus, that monitors subjects’ preferences using brain sensors. He drinks pilsners with judges at the Great American Beer Festival.