Pleasing and accessible and of broader application than the title suggests, inasmuch as “we all have an extraordinary brain.”
A user-friendly tour of the brain and the curious things that go on inside of it, from splendidly practical visions to debilitating hallucinations.
The brain is inseparable from the body, even if, writes New Scientist writer and consultant Thomson, “all too often we think about our brains as being somehow separate from ourselves.” Of course, the concept of “ourselves” is not uniform: We see broad variations in the capabilities and workings of the brain, from normal to abnormal and all points between. Some of the most extraordinary brains aren’t particularly interesting in the thoughts that they generate; one of Thomson’s case studies possesses what is called “highly superior autobiographical memory,” by which a person can recall just about every detail of every moment he has lived. There’s a reason we forget, of course: It’s an evolutionary adaptation that enhances survival so that we pay attention to the oncoming lion or truck rather than being constantly enthralled by lingering memories. “The brain doesn’t tolerate inactivity,” the late Oliver Sacks told Thomson in an interview. Indeed, the brain makes inventive use of its resources; thus it is that some people associate particular colors, musical notes, or even tastes with particular words, which is sometimes a blessing and sometimes a curse. Thomson introduces a lot of good neuroscience lightly, explaining how we perceive reality, such as it is (one of her informants calls reality “a controlled hallucination, reined in by our senses”), and check in with ourselves (“our ability to sense the physical condition of our body is called interoception”). A bonus, along the way, are the author’s notes on such things as improving memory skills through the construction of memory palaces and other event-fixing tricks and training the brain how not to get lost, a highly useful skill indeed.
Pleasing and accessible and of broader application than the title suggests, inasmuch as “we all have an extraordinary brain.”Pub Date: June 26, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-239116-2
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: April 3, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2018
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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