A nicely balanced blend of pop science and personal essay, and just the thing for the family southpaw.
Science journalist Wolman offers a spirited defense of left-handedness, which he takes to be one more sign of the wondrous diversity of nature.
Sinister, gauche, leftist: What’s a self-respecting southpaw to do in the face of so much semantic freight, and the world’s misunderstanding generally? Well, writes Wolman, it’s not necessarily true that all southpaws are born curve-ball pitchers, but the 10–12 percent of humans who are left-handed are interestingly different—“not starkly different…but not trivial in their differences either”—from their right-handed peers. The left and right sides of the human brain are separate, bridged by the corpus callosum, which passes information between the two halves. Yet, early science to the contrary, right-handers don’t do all their thinking on the left side and lefties on the right; there’s a lot more to it than that, even if Wolman favors a gods-for-clods approach, for beyond the two facts that the brain halves are distinct and joined by the corpus callosum, he writes, “there’s no need to be weighed down with more brainy lingo.” Aspiring brain surgeons need not fear, however: Even though written at a lay-accessible level, Wolman’s narrative is robust, treating all kinds of conjectures as to what causes the distinction between right and left—likely, in the end, some little evolutionary jog that permits lots of asymmetry in a species that prizes the adaptive advantages of symmetry, such as having two legs and two eyes that are more or less equal. Happily for lefties, who are “cool because they allow you to un-confound two hypotheses,” there’s no evidence that handedness relates to intelligence or ability, or that lefties are bewitched or weird or doomed, or that all those other prejudices of yore have any foundation.
A nicely balanced blend of pop science and personal essay, and just the thing for the family southpaw.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2005
ISBN: 0-306-81415-3
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Da Capo Lifelong
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2005
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This exciting collective biography features ten important women in the historic struggle to win freedom and civil rights. Pinkney (Duke Ellington: The Piano Prince and His Orchestra, 1998, etc.) tells the well-known stories of Sojourner Truth, Harriet Tubman, and Rosa Parks. Other women such as Biddy Mason and Dorothy Irene Height are in the history books but are less familiar. They span the 18th and 19th centuries, from Sojourner Truth, born into slavery circa 1797, to Shirley Chisholm, born in 1924 and living today. Each story contains essential demographic and biographical information written in an accessible, informal style, which provides a vivid picture of the women’s lives, their personalities, backgrounds, and the actions that made them memorable. Many of the women also had to fight against prejudice toward women in addition to their causes. Some did not live to see the results of their struggle, but successful or not, all were courageous leaders who paved the way for a more democratic and inclusive America. The introduction gives the reader a glimpse into Pinkney’s own life and her rationale for the selection of biographies. A bibliography for further reading lists what are probably her research sources, but are not identified as such and quotations within the chapters are not footnoted in any way. Another quibble is a small mistake in the biography of Dorothy Irene Height as to the two degrees she received in four years. Both were in educational psychology, but Pinkney lists the bachelor’s as in social work. However, these flaws do not compromise the value of the book. Alcorn’s (Langston Hughes, not reviewed, etc.) paintings, oil on canvas, are as magnificent as his figures and add much to this handsome volume. Vibrant colors, rhythmic lines, and collage-like compositions are allegorical in design and convey the essence of each woman and her work. A truly inspiring collection for personal as well as institutional libraries. (Biography. 8-12)
Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2000
ISBN: 0-15-201005-X
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2000
Still, his account of the war's origins, though surely arguable at many points, fills in many gaps.
If you listen closely, you can hear the guns of August blasting a decade and more before WWI actually began.
Fromkin (History/Boston Univ.; The Way of the World, 1999, etc.) delivers a thesis that will be new to general readers (though not to specialists): WWI came about because of the very different, but conveniently intersecting, ambitions of the German and Austro-Hungarian empires, and the signs were evident long before the fighting began. The Habsburgs wanted to crush Serbia, which they (perhaps rightly) perceived to be a potent threat to Austro-Hungarian designs in the Balkans; the Austrian chief of staff “first proposed preventive war against Serbia in 1906, and he did so in 1908–9, in 1912–13, in October 1913, and May 1914: between 1 January 1913 and 1 January 1914 he proposed a Serbian war twenty-five times.” Just so, the Kaiser wanted to crush Russia, which he regarded as Germany’s one real rival for European dominance; war against Serbia would provide a useful pretext, though it wasn’t essential. Indeed, writes Fromkin, when a Slavic nationalist assassinated Archduke Franz Ferdinand on June 28, 1914, in Sarajevo, the rest of Europe practically yawned; even Austria did not retaliate immediately, despite Germany’s urging to get on with the game. “Austria did not play its part very well,” Fromkin writes, and did not even bother declaring war on Germany’s enemies until some time after the war had actually begun. Similarly, Germany neglected to declare war on Serbia, “the only country with which Austria was at war and which, according to Vienna, was the country that posed the threat to Austria’s existence.” Fromkin’s notion that a pan-German conspiracy caused WWI is credible, even if the events he describes sometimes seem more a comedy of errors than a model of efficient militarism.
Still, his account of the war's origins, though surely arguable at many points, fills in many gaps.Pub Date: March 25, 2004
ISBN: 0-375-41156-9
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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