It isn’t a radical notion that the nature-nurture debate ought to be tossed, but Sapolsky (A Primate’s Memoir, 2001, etc.)...
Eighteen quick-footed essays that explain how nature and nurture are both vital ingredients in the stew of life.
Why, asks biologist/neurologist Sapolsky, do we do the things we do? Is it because of the imperative trajectory of our genes, which command without regard to environmental manipulations? Or does nurture trump genetic engineering? Neither and both, he says in these avuncular, dignified and scientifically astute pieces, their prose polished like silver, their humor stealing upon the reader like a merry prankster. Too much evidence exists, in short, to dismiss one or the other. Yes, there is genetic inevitability—red hair, for example, or Huntington’s disease—and, yes, there are examples of nurture swaying genetics, as in social conditioning and environment. The elegance is in the genetic-environmental dance, the way one gains the upper hand and is then countered by a response from the other. Sapolsky demonstrates how change in levels of hormones, nutrients or immune factors can prompt changes in how the brain thinks and emotes. Contrariwise, he details the extraordinary resilience of exported cultural baggage into new surroundings, as when a desert mind-set is plunked down in the Alps (though the rain forest mind-set appears to be less hardy when uprooted, perhaps because its peaceful-through-bounty nature is given a good stabbing). He elucidates the brain-body interactions, including dreams, postponing gratification, overreactions, stress disorders and the truly creepy MBP—Munchausen’s by proxy—in which a parent fabricates symptoms in a child. Then, smoothly, he shows how genes can modulate the way one responds to the environment. Ever entertaining, Sapolsky is always happy to explore such questions as at what age the window of receptivity shuts for, say, new music or a tongue stud or a genital ring.
It isn’t a radical notion that the nature-nurture debate ought to be tossed, but Sapolsky (A Primate’s Memoir, 2001, etc.) has added another round to the cause of its demise.Pub Date: Sept. 20, 2005
ISBN: 0-7432-6015-5
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2005
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
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
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
