Not an in-depth trip but an enjoyable tour.
A science journalist who once took risks but now plays it safe explores what scientists know about risk-taking and why some people are risk takers and others are not.
Sukel (Dirty Minds: How Our Brains Influence Love, Sex, and Relationships, 2012, etc.) turns to research scientists for her investigations of risk-taking. Before reporting on some fascinating experiments being devised and carried out by neuroscientists and psychologists, the author takes readers on a tour of the human brain, naming and describing the parts of its decision-making system. For readers not familiar with this particular area of research, this portion may present a bit of a challenge. Sukel prefers abbreviations to technical terms, and readers may be forced to go flipping back through pages to discover what certain things stand for—e.g., DLPFC or 5-HTTLPR. Nonetheless, the author is a blithe and personable guide to risk-taking, sharing her own experiences and getting research scientists to open up about their findings. She also introduces some thoughtful and candid risk takers—e.g., a rock climber and outdoor adventurer, a Special Forces operator, a Wall Street trader–turned–professional poker player, and a neurosurgeon who calmly takes on extremely difficult cases in which patients’ lives are at stake. We learn how risk-taking is influenced by one’s genes, age, gender, and environment, how emotions, stress, and peer pressure play roles, and, perhaps most important, what one can do to become a better risk taker: preparing for contingencies, knowing oneself and what one wants from life, and recovering from failures. “Risk-taking is not about death-defying feats or million dollar investments,” writes the author. “It’s about exploring, adapting, focusing, and making predictions about future experiences…[it] is a critical part of learning and memory and being alive.”
Not an in-depth trip but an enjoyable tour.Pub Date: March 1, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-4262-1472-1
Page Count: 288
Publisher: National Geographic
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2016
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.
“Quality of life means more than just consumption”: Two MIT economists urge that a smarter, more politically aware economics be brought to bear on social issues.
It’s no secret, write Banerjee and Duflo (co-authors: Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way To Fight Global Poverty, 2011), that “we seem to have fallen on hard times.” Immigration, trade, inequality, and taxation problems present themselves daily, and they seem to be intractable. Economics can be put to use in figuring out these big-issue questions. Data can be adduced, for example, to answer the question of whether immigration tends to suppress wages. The answer: “There is no evidence low-skilled migration to rich countries drives wage and employment down for the natives.” In fact, it opens up opportunities for those natives by freeing them to look for better work. The problem becomes thornier when it comes to the matter of free trade; as the authors observe, “left-behind people live in left-behind places,” which explains why regional poverty descended on Appalachia when so many manufacturing jobs left for China in the age of globalism, leaving behind not just left-behind people but also people ripe for exploitation by nationalist politicians. The authors add, interestingly, that the same thing occurred in parts of Germany, Spain, and Norway that fell victim to the “China shock.” In what they call a “slightly technical aside,” they build a case for addressing trade issues not with trade wars but with consumption taxes: “It makes no sense to ask agricultural workers to lose their jobs just so steelworkers can keep theirs, which is what tariffs accomplish.” Policymakers might want to consider such counsel, especially when it is coupled with the observation that free trade benefits workers in poor countries but punishes workers in rich ones.
Occasionally wonky but overall a good case for how the dismal science can make the world less—well, dismal.Pub Date: Nov. 12, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-61039-950-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: PublicAffairs
Review Posted Online: Aug. 28, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2019
SEEN & HEARD
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
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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