As always, the author’s erudition demands close attention but makes science entertaining and accessible for the layman.
How the mental life of humans has come to differ from that of the other great apes, and speculations about what lies ahead.
Calvin (Neurobiology/Univ. of Washington, Seattle) returns to his favorite subject (How Brains Think, 1996 etc.)—and, inspired by Stephen Hawking’s A Brief History of Time, produces a capsule history of the mind beginning seven million years ago, the time of the common ancestor of humans and other great apes. Calvin places the first brain boom at some 2.5 million years ago with the emergence of the first Homo species. Yet while the Homo sapiens of 100,000 years ago were anatomically modern and may have had some sort of protolanguage, it is only in the last 50,000 years that the modern mind of Homo sapiens sapiens appears, as evidenced by cave paintings and decorative carvings. To set the stage for the burst of creativity that he refers to as “The Mind’s Big Bang,” Calvin shows what the great apes are capable of. Bonobos, for example, are sociable in humanlike ways, but do not show evidence of foresight or much creativity. It is the step up to syntax, or structured thought, says Calvin, that distinguishes the modern brain and tunes it up to do other structured tasks—multistage planning, chains of logic, narratives, discovering hidden order, imagining how things hang together. As a “first of its kind,” Calvin cautions, the human intellect is very new in the scheme of things, a sort of version 1.0, prone to malfunctions and not yet well tested. Thus, he sees precarious times ahead as the speed of technological advance far outstrips ponderous political reaction times and society’s slow pace at problem-solving and consensus-building. Humans are also vulnerable, he warns, to climatic, economic, or diseased-caused “lurches” that we must become more competent at managing. Cultural innovation, not biological evolution, he says, holds the key to the future success of our species.
As always, the author’s erudition demands close attention but makes science entertaining and accessible for the layman.Pub Date: March 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-19-515907-1
Page Count: 220
Publisher: Oxford Univ.
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2004
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis...
Privately published by Strunk of Cornell in 1918 and revised by his student E. B. White in 1959, that "little book" is back again with more White updatings.
Stricter than, say, Bergen Evans or W3 ("disinterested" means impartial — period), Strunk is in the last analysis (whoops — "A bankrupt expression") a unique guide (which means "without like or equal").Pub Date: May 15, 1972
ISBN: 0205632645
Page Count: 105
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1972
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