by Thomas Wynn and Frederick L. Coolidge ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 1, 2011
An intriguing look at fellow beings who seem to have been “inexact mirrors of ourselves,” perhaps not as conceptually...
An anthropologist and a psychologist apply concepts from their respective disciplines to speculate on the mental processes and social organization of our distant, Neandertal cousins.
In this popular follow-up to their more scholarly work (The Rise of Homo sapiens: The Evolution of Modern Thinking, 2009 etc.), University of Colorado, Colorado Springs professors Wynn and Coolidge decipher clues from the Neandertal skeletons, stone artifacts and bones from sites where they hunted and butchered large predators that formed the major portion of their diet and genetic analysis. It is now accepted that modern humans and Neandertals descended from a common African ancestor around 500,000 years ago, and that we share more than 99.8 percent of our genes with them. They migrated to Europe around 200,000 years ago during a period of major glaciation, and became extinct for unknown reasons 30,000 years ago. Skeletal evidence suggests that their build would have been similar to ours, but male skeletons show grievous bodily injuries they likely received while hunting. The handheld stone-tipped spears they used for hunting indicate significant technical skills. They were cave dwellers who lived and hunted in small isolated groups of around 20 families, with little division of labor between the sexes. Wynn and Coolidge are convinced that they would have developed language, yet they note that there are no indications that the Neandertals had any of the spiritual concerns reflected in all known human societies—e.g, while they placed their dead in shallow graves, there is no indication that they practiced burial rites—perhaps because of biological differences in their brains or because of the harsh, demanding conditions of their daily lives.
An intriguing look at fellow beings who seem to have been “inexact mirrors of ourselves,” perhaps not as conceptually advanced but not so dissimilar either.Pub Date: Nov. 1, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-19-974282-0
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: Sept. 3, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 1, 2011
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by Paul Kalanithi ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 19, 2016
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
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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
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by Abhijit V. Banerjee & Esther Duflo ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 12, 2019
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
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