An imaginative, if highly speculative, proposal on the evolution of the brain.
Mrejeru (Augmentation and the Illnesses of Civilization, 2019, etc.) proposes a new theory for the emergence of language in this anthropological work.
According to the author, several brain mutations 4,500 to 7,000 years ago led to the invention of language. Language, in turn, changed not only the way that we communicated, but also the ways that we thought and felt. This gave rise to nuanced emotions, which, in turn, generated logical thinking, leading to civilization as we know it today. This evolution is the heart of Mrejeru’s book, which attempts to determine the factors that made humans’ brains so much more capable than their fellow primates’. He finally identifies an unlikely source for the mutations: low-dose “cosmogenic radiation,” which reached the Earth during shifts in the planet’s geomagnetic field. This radiation, he asserts, particularly affected the brain’s left hemisphere, where language functions are generally centered. Mrejeru develops these and other theories, exploring their ramifications on history, psychology, and language. Overall, the author’s prose style is academic and dry, and its awkward syntax often impedes its flow: “Various experiments on emotional dynamics found the subjects displaying continuous fluctuations, let’s say, from happier to sadder over a short period, like in a 2.5 minutes period, where have been measured 400 fluctuations.” Lay readers will have trouble with the book’s dense terminology and monotonous tone. Those with backgrounds in anthropology, biology, psychology, or a number of other fields, however, may be intrigued by Mrejeru’s theories, which have implications for many of the sciences. His argument may not ultimately persuade them, but they will grant that it goes in some truly unexpected directions.
An imaginative, if highly speculative, proposal on the evolution of the brain.Pub Date: July 22, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-64367-599-2
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Urlink Print & Media, LLC
Review Posted Online: May 6, 2020
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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