A fitting final chapter in the canon of an innovative psychologist.
An acclaimed psychologist’s magnum opus.
Stanford University professor Robert Ornstein’s 1972 book, The Psychology of Consciousness, was the subject of long-form reviews and analysis in the New Yorker, Time, and other national publications. The groundbreaking work provided fresh, scientifically based answers to how the evolution of the brain and consciousness aligned with human spirituality. Nearly a half-century and dozens of books later, the author, who died in 2018, offers readers this final, posthumously published work—the only one co-written with his wife, Sally. Ornstein notes in the preface that it is “the book I was waiting for,” calling it a “sequel” to his best-known work. He updates his past thesis with later findings in the fields of psychology and neuroscience and further develops his self-described “radical conclusion” that what humanity has “experienced as ‘God’ is a development and extension of consciousness.” From primordial shamans who introduced humanity to the first notion of a deity (or, in the book’s parlance, “God 1.0”) to the development of a monotheistic, omnipotent God in Abrahamic religions (“God 3.0”), humans have “tried to transcend normal existence” in a constant endeavor to unravel the mystery of life and death, he asserts. This book carefully balances readability and scientific complexity in its quest to find explanations for the near ubiquity of spirituality in humanity’s history, and the author displays a firm command of information regarding world religion, secular history, and cutting-edge science and psychological theory, as evidenced through extensive endnotes. It also tackles distinctly modern questions, such as why does religion make a rational species like Homo sapiens “do such weird things?” The book’s copious introductory materials are a bit hagiographic in their treatment of Ornstein’s legacy, but its main chapters deliver an effective, timely, and apropos conclusion to his published works. Particularly poignant is its final section, which calls for humankind to “move beyond beliefs” and “to bring up our children to identify with humanity itself.”
A fitting final chapter in the canon of an innovative psychologist.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-949358-99-5
Page Count: 406
Publisher: Malor Books
Review Posted Online: Sept. 30, 2021
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.
A thoughtful program for eradicating poverty from the Pulitzer Prize–winning author of Evicted.
“America’s poverty is not for lack of resources,” writes Desmond. “We lack something else.” That something else is compassion, in part, but it’s also the lack of a social system that insists that everyone pull their weight—and that includes the corporations and wealthy individuals who, the IRS estimates, get away without paying upward of $1 trillion per year. Desmond, who grew up in modest circumstances and suffered poverty in young adulthood, points to the deleterious effects of being poor—among countless others, the precarity of health care and housing (with no meaningful controls on rent), lack of transportation, the constant threat of losing one’s job due to illness, and the need to care for dependent children. It does not help, Desmond adds, that so few working people are represented by unions or that Black Americans, even those who have followed the “three rules” (graduate from high school, get a full-time job, wait until marriage to have children), are far likelier to be poor than their White compatriots. Furthermore, so many full-time jobs are being recast as contracted, fire-at-will gigs, “not a break from the norm as much as an extension of it, a continuation of corporations finding new ways to limit their obligations to workers.” By Desmond’s reckoning, besides amending these conditions, it would not take a miracle to eliminate poverty: about $177 billion, which would help end hunger and homelessness and “make immense headway in driving down the many agonizing correlates of poverty, like violence, sickness, and despair.” These are matters requiring systemic reform, which will in turn require Americans to elect officials who will enact that reform. And all of us, the author urges, must become “poverty abolitionists…refusing to live as unwitting enemies of the poor.” Fortune 500 CEOs won’t like Desmond’s message for rewriting the social contract—which is precisely the point.
A clearly delineated guide to finally eradicate poverty in America.Pub Date: March 21, 2023
ISBN: 9780593239919
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Nov. 30, 2022
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2023
BOOK REVIEW
PERSPECTIVES
PERSPECTIVES
SEEN & HEARD
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change.
Artist and activist Vaid-Menon demonstrates how the normativity of the gender binary represses creativity and inflicts physical and emotional violence.
The author, whose parents emigrated from India, writes about how enforcement of the gender binary begins before birth and affects people in all stages of life, with people of color being especially vulnerable due to Western conceptions of gender as binary. Gender assignments create a narrative for how a person should behave, what they are allowed to like or wear, and how they express themself. Punishment of nonconformity leads to an inseparable link between gender and shame. Vaid-Menon challenges familiar arguments against gender nonconformity, breaking them down into four categories—dismissal, inconvenience, biology, and the slippery slope (fear of the consequences of acceptance). Headers in bold font create an accessible navigation experience from one analysis to the next. The prose maintains a conversational tone that feels as intimate and vulnerable as talking with a best friend. At the same time, the author's turns of phrase in moments of deep insight ring with precision and poetry. In one reflection, they write, “the most lethal part of the human body is not the fist; it is the eye. What people see and how people see it has everything to do with power.” While this short essay speaks honestly of pain and injustice, it concludes with encouragement and an invitation into a future that celebrates transformation.
A fierce, penetrating, and empowering call for change. (writing prompt) (Nonfiction. 14-adult)Pub Date: June 2, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-593-09465-5
Page Count: 64
Publisher: Penguin Workshop
Review Posted Online: March 14, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 2020
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