Inclusive and recognizably sturdy advice on building a healthy brain.
CNN chief medical correspondent Gupta counsels that in order to best take care of your body, you have to first take care of your mind.
The author’s primary concern is to nurture a resilient brain that propagates new cells, makes the ones you have work more efficiently, and is continuously enriched throughout life. In particular, he wishes to stave off age-related brain illnesses classified under dementia, with Alzheimer’s at the fore. Unfortunately, writes Gupta, “we often don’t and can’t know what triggers cognitive decline in the first place or what propels it over time.” Regarding the brain as a whole, “we are still not exactly sure what makes it tick.” As such, the author suggests that we get out in front of it and act preventatively by engaging in behaviors that are widely considered brain-friendly. In a steady, measured voice, he presents a comprehensive view of the best that brain science has to offer to preserve and improve memory at the cognitive level. The villains are a rogue’s gallery of familiar faces: “physical inactivity, unhealthy diet, smoking, social isolation, poor sleep, lack of mentally stimulating activities, and misuse of alcohol.” Gupta explores the evidence, both scientifically documented and anecdotal (but common-sensical), behind the value of exercise; strategies to heighten attention, focus, and concentration; relaxation (including meditation and restorative sleep); diet’s microbial effect on the brain; and the value of a diverse social network. None of this is going to make your jaw drop, but they are all good reminders of their import and how we can let them slide by without much thought. Gupta is a shameless name-dropper—“my friend, actor and fitness buff Matthew McConaughey” gives him exercise advice; the Dalai Lama privately tutors him in meditation—but he is also a genuine source of practical knowledge and sympathy to those struggling with dementia and the family members who are primary caregivers—to whom he tenders a wealth of resources.
Inclusive and recognizably sturdy advice on building a healthy brain.Pub Date: Jan. 5, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-5011-6673-0
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: Feb. 15, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2020
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
BOOK REVIEW
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IN THE NEWS
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
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