A refreshing look at a well-worked topic.
An internationally recognized authority on the relationship between stress and mental functioning explores how the same mechanisms that lay the basis for human creativity and expertise can also set us up for cognitive stagnation.
Cognitive psychologist Breznitz (Memory Fields, 1992, etc.) suggests that “our [unique] ability to find solutions buried in our experience is a hallmark of human creativity,” yet to be matched by any computer. It is the basis of an expert's rapid intuitive grasp of a situation. But it has a downside as well. With the assistance of Hemingway (co-author: The Fifth Wave: A Strategic Vision for Mobile Internet Innovation, Investment & Return, 2012, etc.), Breznitz explains how our major cognitive strength is also a potential weakness, leading us to overlook danger signals or new possibilities and trapping the brain in the “tomb of experience.” Breznitz cites research that demonstrates the proclivity of the brain to take shortcuts—e.g., automatically accepting a solution to a problem based on past experience. In a rapidly changing world, to adapt by unlearning old ways can be critical to survival. Mental rigidity, writes the author, can create a vulnerability for Alzheimer's disease and dementia later in life. However, this need not be the case. “[T]axing mental challenges” are necessary at every stage of our lives. By embracing them, we create cognitive reserves that can slow down mental deterioration even as our brains age. Despite the known problems caused by chronic stress—anxiety, depression, immune disorders, etc.—and despite the fact that any change can be stressful, it is necessary if we are to avoid mental stagnation. Among Breznitz’s recommended activities, reading ranks high.
A refreshing look at a well-worked topic.Pub Date: July 1, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-345-52614-4
Page Count: 288
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 5, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
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
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and...
A dense, absorbing investigation into the medical community's exploitation of a dying woman and her family's struggle to salvage truth and dignity decades later.
In a well-paced, vibrant narrative, Popular Science contributor and Culture Dish blogger Skloot (Creative Writing/Univ. of Memphis) demonstrates that for every human cell put under a microscope, a complex life story is inexorably attached, to which doctors, researchers and laboratories have often been woefully insensitive and unaccountable. In 1951, Henrietta Lacks, an African-American mother of five, was diagnosed with what proved to be a fatal form of cervical cancer. At Johns Hopkins, the doctors harvested cells from her cervix without her permission and distributed them to labs around the globe, where they were multiplied and used for a diverse array of treatments. Known as HeLa cells, they became one of the world's most ubiquitous sources for medical research of everything from hormones, steroids and vitamins to gene mapping, in vitro fertilization, even the polio vaccine—all without the knowledge, must less consent, of the Lacks family. Skloot spent a decade interviewing every relative of Lacks she could find, excavating difficult memories and long-simmering outrage that had lay dormant since their loved one's sorrowful demise. Equal parts intimate biography and brutal clinical reportage, Skloot's graceful narrative adeptly navigates the wrenching Lack family recollections and the sobering, overarching realities of poverty and pre–civil-rights racism. The author's style is matched by a methodical scientific rigor and manifest expertise in the field.
Skloot's meticulous, riveting account strikes a humanistic balance between sociological history, venerable portraiture and Petri dish politics.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2010
ISBN: 978-1-4000-5217-2
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: Dec. 22, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
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