Certainly a lot of useful information, but a small voice must still ask: Doesn’t writing a book touting today’s world as the...
Are you anxious to the point you’re incapacitated and woefully unwell? Then this one’s for you.
Much-published neuropsychiatrist Restak (Brainscapes, 1995, etc.) rings changes on all the meanings of anxiety, “at every level from the molecular to the behavioral.” Restak’s point is that today, much more than in Auden’s post–WWII “Age of Anxiety,” we live in a nervous-making world, hyped by the media and cajoled by Big Pharma, ever ready with pills to soothe our troubled souls. But that should not be necessary, the author hastens to add, except in extreme cases like “GAD” (generalized anxiety disorder), “PTSD” (post-traumatic stress disorder), and a few other nasty states at the extreme end of the anxiety spectrum. Restak distinguishes between fear, which is based on something concrete like the rattler in your path, and anxiety, which is a more sustained concern about things that are uncertain and over which you have no control. These two emotions have their own circuits in the nervous system for good adaptive/survival purposes: to make you aware of danger and to prompt appropriate actions. It is only when they come to dominate behavior, taking over from your frontal lobes, that they become phobias or destructive anxiety disorders, illustrated by Restak’s own case studies (and the title reference to Poe’s “Tell-Tale Heart,” whose needlessly fearful narrator betrays himself). The text also surveys the literature on the cortex and the amygdala (a major subcortical emotional center), describing animal and human studies that have led to the development of anti-anxiety drugs. Restak concludes each chapter and ends with some self-help tips on coping with anxiety. Most of these offer good common sense: learn to repress those catastrophic scenarios; try to maintain perspective; avoid too much free time.
Certainly a lot of useful information, but a small voice must still ask: Doesn’t writing a book touting today’s world as the Big-Time Anxiety Age count as a bit of hype in itself?Pub Date: Nov. 23, 2004
ISBN: 1-4000-4850-8
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Harmony
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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