A clear and canny look into the adolescent brain that will help influence adolescent lives for the better.
Advice from developmental psychologist Steinberg (Psychology/Temple Univ.; The Ten Basic Principles of Good Parenting, 2004, etc.) on navigating and nurturing the adolescent mind.
Adolescence is the great betwixt and between, writes the author, a time when kids are both more and less mature than adults think—and we typically get both wrong—when the brain is undergoing substantial and systematic changes that will be critical in the maturation process. Steinberg takes a comprehensive approach as a researcher, parent, participant, observer and scientist. He includes both clinical reports and examples of how the indications of neuroscience play out in everyday life. The mechanics of adolescent development are fascinating enough—the plasticity of the brain; the reward, relationship and regulatory systems; the genetic and environmental influences on maturation; the tendency toward risk; the interplay between the prefrontal cortex and the limbic system—but this study will be gratefully received by many for its advice on how our increasing understanding of adolescent development can be put to practical use in helping adolescents through the emotional and behavioral tumult. Steinberg stresses the importance of self-control, encompassing “the strength of the emotion and our ability to manage it” and expressed, for instance, through risk taking, the peer effect and impulse control. Parents must provide a variety of things: warmth and firmness, support and consistency, praise and the freedom to investigate, protectiveness and permission. The author provides techniques to get involved on all these levels; though not blazingly original, they merit attention: physical activities, mindfulness, identifying endocrine disruptions and high-stress situations, fashioning tools to motivate determination and tenacity. Steinberg’s audience is as broad as his approach and includes parents, educators, politicians, businesspeople and health care professionals.
A clear and canny look into the adolescent brain that will help influence adolescent lives for the better.Pub Date: Sept. 9, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-544-27977-3
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
Review Posted Online: July 1, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2014
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
BOOK REVIEW
IN THE NEWS
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
