Gimmicky and glancing.
An iPod-slim, low-content perusal of multitasking, computer addiction and other maladies of the mind-machine age.
UCLA Memory and Aging Research Center director Small and freelance writer and spouse Vorgan (co-authors: The Longevity Bible, 2006, etc.) give a superficial look at the measurable effects of technology on the brain. It’s up to readers to supply missing inferences. The authors, for instance, cite a study that shows porn queries on the Internet use “generic terms such as nude, sex, and naked,” whereas less prurient researches “used more complex and varied language,” such as, presumably, “Defenestration of Prague AND Matthias Corvinus.” One gathers that this means that people looking for porn are less linguistically and mentally adept than those interested in the proximate causes of the Thirty Years War, but all we learn from Small and Vorgan is that “viewing pornographic computer images or sending and receiving sexually explicit messages can quickly turn into a habit.” No breaking news there, nor is there much to report in the authors’ observation that Digital Natives (read the youngsters of the First World) think differently from Digital Immigrants (read old-timers who know how to Google) and have, comparatively speaking, the social skills of hyenas. There are a few useful tidbits here and there—the biophysical reasons for feeling irritable after spending hours at the computer, the ways in which technology conspires to give us all attention-deficit disorder. But most of the authors’ weaning-from-addiction advice echoes far superior books—including the directly aped Send (2007), by Will Schwalbe and David Shipley—and has an alternately schoolmarmish (“Cut back on the amount time [sic] you spend using all types of technology”) and New Agey (“First choose a mantra, which can be any sound, word, or phrase that comforts you”) feel. The glossary of technological terms was apparently written for a tribe of elderly readers who have never seen a television, much less a computer—presumably not the group that the authors seek to save.
Gimmicky and glancing.Pub Date: Oct. 14, 2008
ISBN: 978-0-06-134033-8
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Collins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2008
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A moving personal narrative about a family confronting Huntington's disease, interwoven with a journalistic account of the biomedical research that found the gene responsible and may one day find the cure. In 1968, Wexler's mother was diagnosed with Huntington's disease, a devastating neurological illness that often leads to madness and is always fatal. Historian Wexler (Occidental College; Emma Goldman, 1984) then learned that she and her sister, Nancy, each had a 50 percent chance of inheriting the disease from their mother. While Wexler's father organized the Hereditary Disease Foundation to support Huntington's research, and her sister became a researcher, Wexler felt shame over her failure to get as actively involved. She reports that her own diary, one ``obsessed with self-analysis,'' rarely mentioned Huntington's and then only in connection with her mother, never with herself. For years, the family watched Wexler's mother's progressive deterioration, and the daughters watched themselves for symptoms. A research breakthrough in 1983 led to a predictive test that could identify those who would develop the illness years before any symptoms appeared. In the most gripping part of the book, Wexler describes her feelings about living with uncertainty and her decision not to take the test. The research story, which makes up a large portion of the book, is less compelling than the personal one, but the account of fieldwork in a village in Venezuela where nearly every family has members with Huntington's is fascinating. Wexler is at her best when writing about human beings. At one point she speaks of her sister as having ``the insight of a woman at risk, who understands emotionally as well as intellectually the tremendous costs of this illness.'' The same may be said of Wexler. A revealing memoir that tells as much about living at risk as it does about Huntington's.
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8129-1710-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Times/Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995
Whynott takes readers out to sea with ``the true sons of the whalers of old''—the men who make their living harpooning bluefin tuna in the Atlantic Ocean from Cape Cod to Maine. Only 200 harpoon permits are issued to East coast fishermen each year, and about 30 of their boats, says Whynott (English/Mount Holyoke; Following the Bloom, not reviewed), actually harvest any fish. There is no daily limit for harpoon fishermen (regular permit-holders are allowed but one tuna per day), but the total quota for the entire western Atlantic is 53 tons—about 240 fish. Whynott followed the fortunes of Bob Sampson and his son, Brad, for the 1992 and 1993 seasons. Like most harpoon fishermen based on Cape Cod, the Sampsons employ a spotter plane to locate schools of giant bluefin. The pilot will sometimes watch for humpback whales, which, like tuna, feed on herring and mackerel. When a school is spotted, the boat races to the area and one man climbs into the pulpit wielding a 12-foot-long harpoon, usually of aluminum, with a bronze ``dart'' wired for 800 volts. Thanks to the sushi boom, one throw can bag a fish that will bring as much as $50,000 at the Japanese auction houses. Bluefin tuna can grow up to 10 feet long and weigh as much as 1,500 lbs., but most are in the 300- to 500- lb. range. The Sampsons, who helped organize a group of Cape Cod fishermen to deal directly with the Japanese, got an average of $16.50 per pound for their fish in 1992; they grossed almost $200,000 for the 1993 season. Not bad, notes Whynott, for a fish that just 20 years ago was sold as cat food for five cents a pound. Whynott's natural history of the giant bluefin tuna, its mating and migratory habits, and his profiles of the Cape Cod fishermen and their lifestyle, is engagingly rendered.
Pub Date: June 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-374-16208-5
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1995
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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