Weiner depicts motivation as an unfolding story with plot and characters. He offers insights into the history and study of motivation and captures the excitement of the field as it evolves. Theories are explored in the context of the dominant metaphor, or paradigm, of various eras. First to be discussed is the machine metaphor, which took a mechanistic view of human motivation and gave rise to Freudian, Hullian and Gestalt theories. Then Weiner discusses why this paradigm was abandoned in favour of another, which led to Expectancy-Value and Attribution theories. The rise of a further paradigm, which sees humans as evaluating judges, is then examined. The author concludes with a comparison of the theories reviewed and suggestions for future theoretical development. Each chapter opens with a biographical sketch of the theorist being discussed. In addition, Human Motivation contains 12 experiments for students to complete that permit the testing of a key prediction. (Publisher Book Description)