A decent cross section of research and practical ideas about exercising and maintaining brain function.
The founder of the Center for BrainHealth reviews recent research in brain studies and techniques to keep brains in peak condition.
Conventional wisdom says that doing crossword puzzles, word searches, cryptograms and other exercises help preserve brain function and lessen the effects of illnesses associated with elders, including Alzheimer's. Chapman (Behavioral and Brain Sciences/Univ. of Texas, Dallas) founded and directs the Center for BrainHealth, and this book could serve as an introduction, outline and future-developments map for the center. Distilling a vast amount of research, the author reinforces some conventional wisdom while poking holes in other ideas about brain function. Intelligence, long thought to be innate, is becoming recognized as a more complex function of various environmental and genetic influences, not least of which is the approach we take to teaching and learning. Society's tendency toward adding more stimuli to every activity, from listening to music while doing homework, to the office with a TV always tuned to 24-hour news, is wearing away at our brain function. Chapman sees the Internet and its wealth of information as both a boon and hazard, as we become more likely to continually seek out more information rather than moderate our intake and give our minds time to digest what we're learning. The writing dips too often into jargon—e.g., "integrated reasoning capacity" and "dynamic fluid thinking capacity”—but, to be fair, it may stretch readers’ minds to incorporate the ideas in new forms, no doubt boosting brainpower.
A decent cross section of research and practical ideas about exercising and maintaining brain function.Pub Date: Jan. 1, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4516-6547-5
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Free Press
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2012
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.
A follow-on to the author’s garbled but popular 48 Laws of Power, promising that readers will learn how to win friends and influence people, to say nothing of outfoxing all those “toxic types” out in the world.
Greene (Mastery, 2012, etc.) begins with a big sell, averring that his book “is designed to immerse you in all aspects of human behavior and illuminate its root causes.” To gauge by this fat compendium, human behavior is mostly rotten, a presumption that fits with the author’s neo-Machiavellian program of self-validation and eventual strategic supremacy. The author works to formula: First, state a “law,” such as “confront your dark side” or “know your limits,” the latter of which seems pale compared to the Delphic oracle’s “nothing in excess.” Next, elaborate on that law with what might seem to be as plain as day: “Losing contact with reality, we make irrational decisions. That is why our success often does not last.” One imagines there might be other reasons for the evanescence of glory, but there you go. Finally, spin out a long tutelary yarn, seemingly the longer the better, to shore up the truism—in this case, the cometary rise and fall of one-time Disney CEO Michael Eisner, with the warning, “his fate could easily be yours, albeit most likely on a smaller scale,” which ranks right up there with the fortuneteller’s “I sense that someone you know has died" in orders of probability. It’s enough to inspire a new law: Beware of those who spend too much time telling you what you already know, even when it’s dressed up in fresh-sounding terms. “Continually mix the visceral with the analytic” is the language of a consultant’s report, more important-sounding than “go with your gut but use your head, too.”
The Stoics did much better with the much shorter Enchiridion.Pub Date: Oct. 23, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-525-42814-5
Page Count: 580
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: July 30, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 2018
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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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