An engaging, in-depth, and accessible book on brain function.
An exhaustive look at the process behind the formation of thoughts and memories.
Debut author Dharani, a medical doctor, expounds on his “molecular-grid model” of thought generation in this work. He begins by explaining the anatomy of the human brain and nervous system before zeroing in on the composition and electrochemical functions of neurons and dendrites. Next, he describes how particular brain pathways are involved in the formation of various types of memory, including short-term and long-term memory as well as episodic and semantic memory (the latter involving accumulated, general knowledge). The fundamental unit of ideas and memories, he says, is a “primary thought,” which is “formed from each and every sensory input.” (Dharani uses the perception of the color blue as a particularly effective recurring example.) The ability to form primary thoughts, he says, appears to be inherited or possibly innate; they arise in response to everyday stimuli and sensations, he asserts, and they combine to form more complex ideas. He argues that such thoughts are generated in the “molecular grid” in the dendritic membrane, specifically, rather than in the whole neuron, and he details the protein interactions by which it works. Other sections explore the evolution of the mind and the differences between neurons and man-made computers. This well-structured book uses bullet points and frequent diagrams to ensure that its copious information is always reader-friendly. It also italicizes and boldfaces key words and phrases, which correspond with helpful entries in the glossary and index. One particular chapter, which goes deeper into the formation of memory traces and dendritic pleats, may be the most interesting section for general readers, as it discusses mental pathways that exist in utero and in newborns—which, he says, may explain artistic prodigies, such as Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart. Only one chapter, which discusses the metaphysics of thought, seems slightly out of place, as its philosophical theme contrasts with the remainder’s physiological focus.
An engaging, in-depth, and accessible book on brain function.Pub Date: Sept. 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-12-800900-0
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Academic Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 11, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
From the national correspondent for PBS's MacNeil-Lehrer Newshour: a moving memoir of her youth in the Deep South and her role in desegregating the Univ. of Georgia. The eldest daughter of an army chaplain, Hunter-Gault was born in what she calls the ``first of many places that I would call `my place' ''—the small village of Due West, tucked away in a remote little corner of South Carolina. While her father served in Korea, Hunter-Gault and her mother moved first to Covington, Georgia, and then to Atlanta. In ``L.A.'' (lovely Atlanta), surrounded by her loving family and a close-knit black community, the author enjoyed a happy childhood participating in activities at church and at school, where her intellectual and leadership abilities soon were noticed by both faculty and peers. In high school, Hunter-Gault found herself studying the ``comic-strip character Brenda Starr as I might have studied a journalism textbook, had there been one.'' Determined to be a journalist, she applied to several colleges—all outside of Georgia, for ``to discourage the possibility that a black student would even think of applying to one of those white schools, the state provided money for black students'' to study out of state. Accepted at Michigan's Wayne State, the author was encouraged by local civil-rights leaders to apply, along with another classmate, to the Univ. of Georgia as well. Her application became a test of changing racial attitudes, as well as of the growing strength of the civil-rights movement in the South, and Gault became a national figure as she braved an onslaught of hostilities and harassment to become the first black woman to attend the university. A remarkably generous, fair-minded account of overcoming some of the biggest, and most intractable, obstacles ever deployed by southern racists. (Photographs—not seen.)
Pub Date: Nov. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-374-17563-2
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1992
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.
A light-speed tour of (mostly) Western poetry, from the 4,000-year-old Gilgamesh to the work of Australian poet Les Murray, who died in 2019.
In the latest entry in the publisher’s Little Histories series, Carey, an emeritus professor at Oxford whose books include What Good Are the Arts? and The Unexpected Professor: An Oxford Life in Books, offers a quick definition of poetry—“relates to language as music relates to noise. It is language made special”—before diving in to poetry’s vast history. In most chapters, the author deals with only a few writers, but as the narrative progresses, he finds himself forced to deal with far more than a handful. In his chapter on 20th-century political poets, for example, he talks about 14 writers in seven pages. Carey displays a determination to inform us about who the best poets were—and what their best poems were. The word “greatest” appears continually; Chaucer was “the greatest medieval English poet,” and Langston Hughes was “the greatest male poet” of the Harlem Renaissance. For readers who need a refresher—or suggestions for the nightstand—Carey provides the best-known names and the most celebrated poems, including Paradise Lost (about which the author has written extensively), “Kubla Khan,” “Ozymandias,” “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” Wordsworth and Coleridge’s Lyrical Ballads, which “changed the course of English poetry.” Carey explains some poetic technique (Hopkins’ “sprung rhythm”) and pauses occasionally to provide autobiographical tidbits—e.g., John Masefield, who wrote the famous “Sea Fever,” “hated the sea.” We learn, as well, about the sexuality of some poets (Auden was bisexual), and, especially later on, Carey discusses the demons that drove some of them, Robert Lowell and Sylvia Plath among them. Refreshingly, he includes many women in the volume—all the way back to Sappho—and has especially kind words for Marianne Moore and Elizabeth Bishop, who share a chapter.
Necessarily swift and adumbrative as well as inclusive, focused, and graceful.Pub Date: April 21, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-23222-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Feb. 8, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
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