More at home in college classrooms than on parents' nightstands.
This book competently covers the details of adolescent brain development but offers few surprises and scant advice.
It’s not really news that the brain continues to develop well into the early 20s. Scholars and journalists have long written about the “unfinished” nature of the teen brain. Here to clarify exactly what that means is Jensen (Neurology/Univ. of Pennsylvania), the mother of two boys who have survived those fraught years between childhood and full adulthood. While the author shares a few stories about her sons’ teen years, this is not a book of anecdotes. Instead, Jensen, with the assistance of Pulitzer Prize–winning Washington Post writer Nutt (Shadows Bright as Glass: The Remarkable Story of One Man's Journey from Brain Trauma to Artistic Triumph, 2011), lays out the way human brains develop: “back to front” with the impulse-controlling, executive-functioning circuits of the frontal lobe coming in last. If you ever doubted that this was true, the author’s collection of study results will convince you. Meticulously documented and reported, the studies offer proof that it’s not just parents who think their teenagers don’t quite have it all together. Jensen ably explains neurons, synapses, neurotransmitters and so on, offering a vocabulary that provides scaffolding for understanding how the brain grows. The prevalence of medical terminology may engage some readers, but it could easily put off parents who pick up the book based on its subtitle. Individual chapters expound on the biology behind the many perils of the teen years—why it’s such a prime time for getting hooked on drugs and what those drugs do to a developing brain, for instance—but parents looking for guidance on avoiding these pitfalls will be disappointed. Parents and teens may balk at the heavily risk-oriented perspective Jensen takes throughout, which gives regrettably short shrift to the more positive flip side of the teen scene: extraordinary creativity, energy and learning capacity.
More at home in college classrooms than on parents' nightstands.Pub Date: Jan. 6, 2015
ISBN: 978-0062067845
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: Oct. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2014
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.
A helpful guide to working effectively with people from other cultures.
“The sad truth is that the vast majority of managers who conduct business internationally have little understanding about how culture is impacting their work,” writes Meyer, a professor at INSEAD, an international business school. Yet they face a wider array of work styles than ever before in dealing with clients, suppliers and colleagues from around the world. When is it best to speak or stay quiet? What is the role of the leader in the room? When working with foreign business people, failing to take cultural differences into account can lead to frustration, misunderstanding or worse. Based on research and her experiences teaching cross-cultural behaviors to executive students, the author examines a handful of key areas. Among others, they include communicating (Anglo-Saxons are explicit; Asians communicate implicitly, requiring listeners to read between the lines), developing a sense of trust (Brazilians do it over long lunches), and decision-making (Germans rely on consensus, Americans on one decider). In each area, the author provides a “culture map scale” that positions behaviors in more than 20 countries along a continuum, allowing readers to anticipate the preferences of individuals from a particular country: Do they like direct or indirect negative feedback? Are they rigid or flexible regarding deadlines? Do they favor verbal or written commitments? And so on. Meyer discusses managers who have faced perplexing situations, such as knowledgeable team members who fail to speak up in meetings or Indians who offer a puzzling half-shake, half-nod of the head. Cultural differences—not personality quirks—are the motivating factors behind many behavioral styles. Depending on our cultures, we understand the world in a particular way, find certain arguments persuasive or lacking merit, and consider some ways of making decisions or measuring time natural and others quite strange.
These are not hard and fast rules, but Meyer delivers important reading for those engaged in international business.Pub Date: May 27, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-61039-250-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: April 15, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2014
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2024 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.
bookshelf