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A QUESTION OF INTELLIGENCE

THE IQ DEBATE IN AMERICA

A real hot potato, as a columnist for Fortune defends IQ tests and their unavoidable message: that not all people, nor all groups of people, are born with equal mental abilities. According to Seligman, the current distrust of IQ tests is unfounded, a result of the wishful thinking of the 1960's. In fact, he reports, almost all experts (psychologists, educators, laboratory researchers) believe that IQ tests ``do indeed measure mental abilities that might collectively be thought of as intelligence.'' Moreover, most believe that the tests are not culturally biased. The problem is, well, that some people seem to be smarter than others, which violates the cherished American belief that everyone gets an even start in life. This matters because IQ ``has enormous predictive power in real-world situations'' and correlates closely with future economic status. What's worse, different races score differently: East Asians (Chinese, Japanese) score consistently higher than whites, blacks consistently lower. What's even worse, experts agree that IQ is largely inheritable, so there's no immediate way to rectify the imbalance. The long-term solution, Seligman delicately suggests, may be eugenic planning. But first IQ must be acknowledged as a useful tool, especially for educators who need to identify students requiring remedial help. Seligman writes sympathetically of Cyril Burt and Arthur Jensen, two researchers who faced the wrath of the anti-IQ lobby. He sketches the history of intelligence testing; contrasts the high scores of Jews and Japanese (Jews excel in verbal portions of the test, Japanese in math) to demonstrate the multisided nature of intelligence; ponders the future (American kids have fewer high and low scores than in generations past; we are grouping together in mediocrity). He even takes an IQ test himself, but refuses to reveal his score. Is Seligman an unwitting racist or a hero breaking the code of silence? Either way, it doesn't take a lot of brains to guess that his levelheaded presentation will stir up a storm.

Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1992

ISBN: 1-55972-131-6

Page Count: 192

Publisher: Birch Lane Press

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1992

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MASTERY

Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should...

Greene (The 33 Strategies of War, 2007, etc.) believes that genius can be learned if we pay attention and reject social conformity.

The author suggests that our emergence as a species with stereoscopic, frontal vision and sophisticated hand-eye coordination gave us an advantage over earlier humans and primates because it allowed us to contemplate a situation and ponder alternatives for action. This, along with the advantages conferred by mirror neurons, which allow us to intuit what others may be thinking, contributed to our ability to learn, pass on inventions to future generations and improve our problem-solving ability. Throughout most of human history, we were hunter-gatherers, and our brains are engineered accordingly. The author has a jaundiced view of our modern technological society, which, he writes, encourages quick, rash judgments. We fail to spend the time needed to develop thorough mastery of a subject. Greene writes that every human is “born unique,” with specific potential that we can develop if we listen to our inner voice. He offers many interesting but tendentious examples to illustrate his theory, including Einstein, Darwin, Mozart and Temple Grandin. In the case of Darwin, Greene ignores the formative intellectual influences that shaped his thought, including the discovery of geological evolution with which he was familiar before his famous voyage. The author uses Grandin's struggle to overcome autistic social handicaps as a model for the necessity for everyone to create a deceptive social mask.

Readers unfamiliar with the anecdotal material Greene presents may find interesting avenues to pursue, but they should beware of the author's quirky, sometimes misleading brush-stroke characterizations.

Pub Date: Nov. 13, 2012

ISBN: 978-0-670-02496-4

Page Count: 320

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: Sept. 12, 2012

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2012

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THE 48 LAWS OF POWER

If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.

The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.

Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.

If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.

Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998

ISBN: 0-670-88146-5

Page Count: 430

Publisher: Viking

Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010

Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998

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