A lyrical and scientifically rigorous account of the emotional and physical toll climate change is taking on the human brain.
This is your brain on climate change.
In his second book, neuroscientist and environmental journalist Aldern examines the palpable effects of climate change on our brain chemistry, including not just increased anxiety, stress, and depression, but also detrimental changes in decision-making abilities and judgment. Paraphrasing a climate advocate in California’s Central Valley, the author writes, “planetary empathy is rooted in pain: the aches and grimaces of a world grieving not just the loss of species and an unspoiled troposphere, but also the loss of the way time once passed and the seasons once progressed. It is the sorrow of glacial ice bearing water for the last time; seas unable to hold their vapors close; the erasure of whole fluvial languages once carved into riverbeds.” As a result of all this loss, notes Aldern, “the shadows of stress loom,” generating in our bodies a torrent of hormonal responses that prompt “relentless cortisol storms” and altering the landscape of our brains—e.g., via the gradual shrinking of the hippocampus. Furthermore, neurotoxins—which can lead to a vast array of serious health concerns, including Alzheimer’s and ALS—are being released in increasing amounts due to the drastic changes in the climate, which include expanding bacterial and algal outgrowths, melting permafrost, and accelerating swarms of virus-bearing mosquitos. The chronic stress we feel as we lose seasons, coastlines, farmlands, and mountaintops is literally changing our brains’ “structure and function, leading to memory problems, mood disorders, and heightened anxiety,” all of which have ripple effects on those around us. As Aldern demonstrates throughout this distressing yet urgently necessary book, climate change is affecting the very duration of our lives. This is a unique—and uniquely disturbing—addition to the literature.
A lyrical and scientifically rigorous account of the emotional and physical toll climate change is taking on the human brain.Pub Date: April 9, 2024
ISBN: 9780593472743
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Dutton
Review Posted Online: Feb. 10, 2024
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2024
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.
A warts-and-all portrait of the famed techno-entrepreneur—and the warts are nearly beyond counting.
To call Elon Musk (b. 1971) “mercurial” is to undervalue the term; to call him a genius is incorrect. Instead, Musk has a gift for leveraging the genius of others in order to make things work. When they don’t, writes eminent biographer Isaacson, it’s because the notoriously headstrong Musk is so sure of himself that he charges ahead against the advice of others: “He does not like to share power.” In this sharp-edged biography, the author likens Musk to an earlier biographical subject, Steve Jobs. Given Musk’s recent political turn, born of the me-first libertarianism of the very rich, however, Henry Ford also comes to mind. What emerges clearly is that Musk, who may or may not have Asperger’s syndrome (“Empathy did not come naturally”), has nurtured several obsessions for years, apart from a passion for the letter X as both a brand and personal name. He firmly believes that “all requirements should be treated as recommendations”; that it is his destiny to make humankind a multi-planetary civilization through innovations in space travel; that government is generally an impediment and that “the thought police are gaining power”; and that “a maniacal sense of urgency” should guide his businesses. That need for speed has led to undeniable successes in beating schedules and competitors, but it has also wrought disaster: One of the most telling anecdotes in the book concerns Musk’s “demon mode” order to relocate thousands of Twitter servers from Sacramento to Portland at breakneck speed, which trashed big parts of the system for months. To judge by Isaacson’s account, that may have been by design, for Musk’s idea of creative destruction seems to mean mostly chaos.
Alternately admiring and critical, unvarnished, and a closely detailed account of a troubled innovator.Pub Date: Sept. 12, 2023
ISBN: 9781982181284
Page Count: 688
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2023
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2023
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Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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