For those who like their science superficial and swaddled in pop culture.
Life is full of mysteries, including the mystery of mystery itself.
After having a book pulled from circulation and losing a New Yorker gig for transgressions such as plagiarism, cherry-picked facts, and invented quotations, Lehrer, sad to say, must be read under the shadow of a question mark. This foray in pop science is similar to his earlier works, though, one hopes, more scrupulously fact checked. Lehrer opens with an explication of what it is that makes us love a mystery story in the first place, citing the originator of the form, Edgar Allan Poe: “Poe’s insight was that the audience didn’t care about the murder….What they really cared about was the mystery.” Mysteries do something to the mind, igniting neurons that try to predict outcomes but, if the story is skillfully told, give way to “subtly violating our expectations, postponing the answer for as long as possible.” The storytelling skills of culture highbrow and middle come under consideration, from Citizen Kane to Law & Order: SVU, all of which make use of what J.J. Abrams calls the “mystery box technique,” which keeps viewers both engaged and puzzled. Lehrer then turns to magic, chronicling his experiences with a statistician who figured out how to beat lottery algorithms and then became fascinated by sleight of hand—again, a species of mystery, “creating a performance we can’t explain.” So far, so good, but then Lehrer stretches the bounds of his thesis to enfold the question of how we perceive and misperceive and are beguiled, incorporating bits and pieces of music lore (John Lennon’s “I Am the Walrus” and Bach foremost); the advertising campaign that brought the Volkswagen to America; the merits of the Comic Sans typeface, and the rabbit-duck optical illusion. Lehrer makes a good village explainer—good, as Gertrude Stein said of Ezra Pound, if you’re a village—but the narrative soufflé often threatens to fall as he wanders from subject to subject.
For those who like their science superficial and swaddled in pop culture.Pub Date: Aug. 17, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9587-7
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Avid Reader Press
Review Posted Online: June 9, 2021
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 2021
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.
Words that made a nation.
Isaacson is known for expansive biographies of great thinkers (and Elon Musk), but here he pens a succinct, stimulating commentary on the Founding Fathers’ ode to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.” His close reading of the Declaration of Independence’s second sentence, published to mark the 250th anniversary of the document’s adoption, doesn’t downplay its “moral contradiction.” Thomas Jefferson enslaved hundreds of people yet called slavery “a cruel war against human nature” in his first draft of the Declaration. All but 15 of the document’s 56 signers owned enslaved people. While the sentence in question asserted “all men are created equal” and possess “unalienable rights,” the Founders “consciously and intentionally” excluded women, Native Americans, and enslaved people. And yet the sentence is powerful, Isaacson writes, because it names a young nation’s “aspirations.” He mounts a solid defense of what ought to be shared goals, among them economic fairness, “moral compassion,” and a willingness to compromise. “Democracy depends on this,” he writes. Isaacson is excellent when explaining how Enlightenment intellectuals abroad influenced the founders. Benjamin Franklin, one of the Declaration’s “five-person drafting committee,” stayed in David Hume’s home for a month in the early 1770s, “discussing ideas of natural rights” with the Scottish philosopher. Also strong is Isaacson’s discussion of the “edits and tweaks” made to Jefferson’s draft. As recommended by Franklin and others, the changes were substantial, leaving Jefferson “distraught.” Franklin, who emerges as the book’s hero, helped establish municipal services, founded a library, and encouraged religious diversity—the kind of civic-mindedness that we could use more of today, Isaacson reminds us.
A short, smart analysis of perhaps the most famous passage in American history reveals its potency and unfulfilled promise.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2025
ISBN: 9781982181314
Page Count: 80
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Aug. 29, 2025
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2025
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
PERSPECTIVES
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