by Peter J. Bentley ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 3, 2009
Filled with some good popular science, but to find it you have to wend through Bentley’s over-the-top idea of a really bad...
Things go relentlessly, inexorably wrong in this account of a day in the life of a hapless hero who should have stayed in bed.
Bentley (Computer Science/University College London; The Book of Numbers, 2008, etc.) begins with his hero’s failure to hear the alarm clock, a mishap the author uses to discourse on human sleep and dreaming. Next comes a fall from slipping on shampoo in the bathroom and a chance to explain what makes soap soap. (It’s a marriage of alkali and oil that allows soap molecules to wrap up oil and grease from your skin while letting dirt dissolve in water.) What follows is the inevitable nick while shaving, and Bentley’s exegesis on skin, hair follicles and blood-clotting mechanisms, and why blotting with tissue not only can introduce bacteria to the cut, but also disrupt the cells trying to close the wound. And so it goes through several dozen brief chapters that chart more examples of Murphy’s law at work. There’s burnt toast for breakfast. A tank full of diesel fuel instead of gasoline. Another fall while running after the bus. Chewing gum that gets in his hair during the ride. A missed stop. Getting soaked by rain. Lost. Stung by a bee. Of course there are more problems at the office, like liquid spilled on the keyboard and computer viruses. Then our hero arrives home and promptly spills red wine on the rug. Does this seem a bit contrived? It is. All this sh*t is simply the means by which Bentley can disgorge his vast knowledge. Along the way he offers a very brief discussion of the origin of water and similarly brief briefs on the immune system and the sense of pain. Nonetheless, the author is solid in his discussions of modern technology—cell phones, CDs, glues, dyes, springy (“air-filled’’) sneakers—and he even offers helpful tips (see wine stains, for example).
Filled with some good popular science, but to find it you have to wend through Bentley’s over-the-top idea of a really bad day.Pub Date: March 3, 2009
ISBN: N/A
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Rodale
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2009
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by Chris Gardner with Quincy Troupe ‧ RELEASE DATE: June 1, 2006
Well-told and admonitory.
Young-rags-to-mature-riches memoir by broker and motivational speaker Gardner.
Born and raised in the Milwaukee ghetto, the author pulled himself up from considerable disadvantage. He was fatherless, and his adored mother wasn’t always around; once, as a child, he spied her at a family funeral accompanied by a prison guard. When beautiful, evanescent Moms was there, Chris also had to deal with Freddie “I ain’t your goddamn daddy!” Triplett, one of the meanest stepfathers in recent literature. Chris did “the dozens” with the homies, boosted a bit and in the course of youthful adventure was raped. His heroes were Miles Davis, James Brown and Muhammad Ali. Meanwhile, at the behest of Moms, he developed a fondness for reading. He joined the Navy and became a medic (preparing badass Marines for proctology), and a proficient lab technician. Moving up in San Francisco, married and then divorced, he sold medical supplies. He was recruited as a trainee at Dean Witter just around the time he became a homeless single father. All his belongings in a shopping cart, Gardner sometimes slept with his young son at the office (apparently undiscovered by the night cleaning crew). The two also frequently bedded down in a public restroom. After Gardner’s talents were finally appreciated by the firm of Bear Stearns, his American Dream became real. He got the cool duds, hot car and fine ladies so coveted from afar back in the day. He even had a meeting with Nelson Mandela. Through it all, he remained a prideful parent. His own no-daddy blues are gone now.
Well-told and admonitory.Pub Date: June 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-074486-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Amistad/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2006
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by Daniel Kahneman ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2011
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our...
A psychologist and Nobel Prize winner summarizes and synthesizes the recent decades of research on intuition and systematic thinking.
The author of several scholarly texts, Kahneman (Emeritus Psychology and Public Affairs/Princeton Univ.) now offers general readers not just the findings of psychological research but also a better understanding of how research questions arise and how scholars systematically frame and answer them. He begins with the distinction between System 1 and System 2 mental operations, the former referring to quick, automatic thought, the latter to more effortful, overt thinking. We rely heavily, writes, on System 1, resorting to the higher-energy System 2 only when we need or want to. Kahneman continually refers to System 2 as “lazy”: We don’t want to think rigorously about something. The author then explores the nuances of our two-system minds, showing how they perform in various situations. Psychological experiments have repeatedly revealed that our intuitions are generally wrong, that our assessments are based on biases and that our System 1 hates doubt and despises ambiguity. Kahneman largely avoids jargon; when he does use some (“heuristics,” for example), he argues that such terms really ought to join our everyday vocabulary. He reviews many fundamental concepts in psychology and statistics (regression to the mean, the narrative fallacy, the optimistic bias), showing how they relate to his overall concerns about how we think and why we make the decisions that we do. Some of the later chapters (dealing with risk-taking and statistics and probabilities) are denser than others (some readers may resent such demands on System 2!), but the passages that deal with the economic and political implications of the research are gripping.
Striking research showing the immense complexity of ordinary thought and revealing the identities of the gatekeepers in our minds.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-374-27563-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2011
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