"The Age of Insight: The Quest to Understand the Unconscious in Art, Mind and Brain from Vienna 1900 to the Present," by Eric R. Kandel.

I can't remember where I heard about "The Age of Insight", but I do remember going to my library's catalog immediately and looking it up.  I think I may have actually shouted for joy when I saw it was there and available.  Kandel's book looks at art and psychology in turn-of-the-century Vienna--specifically the development of the work of Freud, Klimt, Kokoschka, and Schiele and how they played off each other, combined with what we know about how our brains work, how we see, and how we interpret what we see.  It's a union of art history, psychology and neuroscience.  And that, my friends, is right up my alley. How violently my hopes were dashed.  I found so many unconvincing and troubling statements and bad art history interpretations after just a casual flip through the book's art images and captions as well as in the first 40 or so pages of the text that I gave up.  Dr. Kandel may know his neuroscience (I don't even know about that--I didn't get that far), but he does not know history or art history well enough or broadly enough to make this a worthwhile read.  For instance, his brief, flippant summary of the Enlightenment was completely off base, as if he had read Voltaire's  "Candide" and somehow missed that it was satire.  And his suggestion that Caravaggio's "Judith" was virginal and squeamish is the only such time I've heard that interpretation, and flies in the face of the actual image even if you know nothing of the prostitute who posed for it or the scoundrel of the artist who produced it. After practically every sentence I wanted to scream, "Stop begging the question and just come out with your Nobel-worthy insight already!".  But to no avail. I had such high hopes for this book--especially after seeing that Nobel Prize touted on the cover--I couldn't wait to get my hands on it.  I was totally let down.

"Proust Was A Neuroscientist," by Jonah Lehrer

If you're an artist or art lover, you're probably going to love this book.  If you're a scientist, you're probably going to hate this book.

I love both, so I'm torn.  Jonah Lehrer's basic premise here is that art has contributed more insight into how our brains work than science has...and in the cases presented here, art beat science by 50 or 100 years.  For instance, he looks at "Leaves of Grass," and determines that Walt Whitman had shaken off the old Cartesian mind/body divide long before scientists figured out that our thoughts and feelings were generated in our brains, with simple (grey) matter and energy, not a disembodied "mind" or "soul" pulling the strings.

Of course, it's easy to work backward from a new discovery and then find the precursors to it.   And that's what Lehrer does in each chapter.  He discusses Igor Stravinsky's "The Right of Spring" and it's impact on determining how our brains process music. Then there's Paul Cezanne's seemingly spontaneous painting and what it reveals about our vision.  He claims that Gertrude Stein discovered fundamental truths of linguistics long before that punk kid, Noam Chomsky, came on the scene.  And Proust, he claims, has much to teach us about memory.

Personally, I think Lehrer's science is lacking here.  However, the connections that he draws are often pretty insightful and the stories are interesting.  Plus, his passion is so evident and his writing style is so pleasing that I really can't just dismiss this book for failing to provide solid scientific evidence. It's value seems to lie elsewhere.

After all, the arts are in crisis right now, with major theatres, opera companies, museums, etc. having to close their doors.  We live in an age where art is seen as a luxury, and artists are devalued as dabblers and hobbyists.  What Lehrer is reminding us of in "Proust Was A Neuroscientist," is that the arts offer us insight into ourselves.  They hint at higher truths and point us to new ways of thinking so we can uncover them.  He takes Einstein's decree that "imagination is more important than knowledge," and gives us tangible examples of what artists have contributed to our knowledge and appreciation of the world.

Hopefully more people will read this book and think about the connections between art and science.  Hopefully it will serve as a wake up call that if we fail to support our artists we may also hinder the progress of our scientists.

"How We Do Harm: A Doctor Breaks Ranks About Being Sick in America," by Otis Brawley

Otis Brawley's resume is impressive.  He is the chief medical officer and executive vice president of the American Cancer Society, a practicing oncologist at Grady Memorial Hospital in Atlanta, and professor of hematology, oncology, medicine, and epidemiology at Emory.  He graduated from the school of medicine at the University of Chicago and among other things, he completed a fellowship in medical oncology at the National Cancer Institute.  


Because he is an oncologist in Atlanta who sees some of the poorest and some of the richest people in our country, and because he has taught medicine, participated in clinical research, and seen for decades the political influence that can both help and hinder medical procedures and research, I have little doubt that this guy knows what he's talking about.  And what he has to say about the current state of the American health care system is pretty damned depressing.


There are, as we all know, the devastating, heart-wrenching cases of lives cut short due to inadequate access to health care that our poorest citizens experience each and every day.  But in our land of disparity, there is another ugly and equally appalling side to the system that we rarely hear about--the overuse of care that ends up causing lots of agony, loss of quality of life, and at the same time, lines the pockets of doctors, drug and device makers, and others.  Beware the "Cadillac" health insurance policies.  Depending upon your diagnosis, and Brawley focuses primarily on cancer for the entire book, you may suffer almost as much from having too much insurance as from having not enough.  This overuse of care, or specifically, the application of treatments and medications to patients who do not need them and will not benefit from them, is a major part of why health care is so expensive in America, and why it is that we spend more money than most industrialized countries and yet get much less out of the system.


Brawley spends a few chapters discussing his experiences with, and research into, prostate and breast cancers.  And his controversial stance on screening for these diseases, especially among younger (under 50) people who have no signs or symptoms, is backed up with a lot of statistical data that will make most people rethink the benefits of screenings for themselves and their loved ones.  Small percentages of lives are saved, but many, many more lives are damaged and much harm done to the people who test positive during these screenings, many of whom will exhibit cancers that may never grow or metastasize and may therefore never cause any problems or pose any real harm.  But the option of "wait and see"  is rarely offered up, even when tremendously detrimental procedures and treatments may completely diminish a person's quality of life or may even shorten their lives.  Brawley goes so far as to say that the rates of death from prostate cancer may have gone down in part because of so many men dying from treatment complications before they would naturally have died from their cancer.  If your treatments result in a stroke, for instance, your death will be recorded as such, rather than as "complications from prostate cancer treatment."  This means that official statistics record an increase in stroke deaths and a decrease in prostate cancer.  It's a reshuffling of data that is disingenuous at best.


Brawley's solution to all the problems within the health care system is simply to base treatment upon solid science and to minimize harm as much as possible.  As reasonable as this seems, it means trying to untie treatment decisions from patients' insurance or money (whether the issue is lack of, or abundance of).  It also means having open conversations with patients and making clear, as he so often states throughout, what the doctors know to be true, what they don't know about an issue, and what they merely believe could be true.  And perhaps as importantly, it means educating ourselves and knowing what questions to ask in order to make sure we are receiving treatments that will improve our health, instead of causing us harm while helping our doctors and pharma reps line their pockets. 


I wanted to read this book after seeing parts of Brawley's keynote speech to the Association of Health Care Journalists, which you can watch here:
 http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LOdDS8rd4-8&feature=related

"Atheists: A Groundbreaking Study of America's Nonbelievers," by Bruce Hunsberger and Bob Altemeyer

Atheists (and just those who are interested in religion and/or a lack of religion) everywhere are indebted to Hunsberger and Altemeyer for this concise, yet powerful look at the cold hard statistics that emerged from their intensive study. Think atheists are amoral and untrustworthy? If so, that puts you exactly in line with what an enormous majority of Americans think. But is there any way to know for sure? Well, they combine 20+ years of extensive surveying that quizzed thousands of Canadian college students and their parents about their religious beliefs with an in-depth study of about 300 active members of atheist groups across the United States to bring some empirical evidence on the matter to light. 

This project is remarkable for being the first significant study of its kind, and it's also written with a warm, humorous prose style and includes a number of helpful graphs and charts, making it easy to read and understand. It also accommodates beliefs in a very generous way, allowing people to self-describe as being atheist, agnostic, spiritual, fundamentalist, and lots of other areas in between.  They also ask questions about attitudes towards spirituality, supernaturalism, and other realms of belief outside of strict or traditional boundaries.  The conclusions drawn are that much stronger and more believable as a result.  Non-believers also are given a chance to talk about what events or ideas lead them to their questioning of religious belief, and an overwhelming number report that it was either a perception of the misbehavior and/or hypocrisy of believers, or a lack of morality and/or logic in the religious texts that tilted them towards atheism or agnosticism.  And in that light, perhaps the results of the study shouldn't be so surprising.

Still, if you are among those who think that a lack of religious belief translates to a lack of morality, then the results of Hunsberger and Altemeyer's research might actually shock you. What they found, time and time again, is that when it comes to basic human decency and egalitarian and humane behavior, atheists come out on top every time when compared to Christians, Jews, Muslims, and people of every other religion (whether they are part of an organized, institutionalized religion or just hold a basic belief in an unspecified supernatural entity).  For instance, atheists tend to be much less dogmatic or ethnocentric, they tend to hold fewer racial prejudices, and they are less authoritarian.  And when asked specifically about influencing others' religious beliefs, they are much more likely to encourage people to educate themselves and draw their own conclusions about religion and morality than simply trying to convert others to their own camp.   


In short, if you are a non-believer, prepare to be flattered.  If not, you'll still find these studies interesting and eye-opening.  In either case, you'll watch a lot of myths being dispelled.  And that's always a good thing.

"Infidel" by Ayaan Hirsi Ali

Read this book!

Ali's biography is easily the most powerful one I've ever read. It is devastating, heart-wrenching, and exhilarating by turns, and as such it is at times a page turner and at times the kind of book you have to set aside and come back to once you're again emotionally ready to handle it. It is well worth the effort and the inevitable shock and tears. Ali has faced unspeakable abuse herself and been witness to a historically and religiously empowered system that continues to abuse, subjugate, devalue and even murder women, and she has come out swinging. You will cringe and seethe at many of her experiences, and you will weep tears of joy and relief upon reading about others. That any woman could have survived with body and mind intact, and then to have risked so much to live on her own terms, not to mention to have completed a Master's degree in a language she had started to learn a mere 4 or 5 years earlier, is a testament to sheer human willpower and determination.

Ali admires the work of Mary Wollstonecraft, and through her own hard, honest work and her refusal to be silenced, has assured herself a place in history on equal footing with Wollstonecraft. I know the word "hero" is overused, but really, Ali reminds us of what a real hero is. She has literally risked her life, bravely faced her own family’s contempt, refused to cower to threats and political pressure, and continues to do so in order to give voice to the millions of Muslim women around the world who have been infantilized and rendered mute.

Read “Infidel”. It is quite possibly the most important book of our day.

"The Prague Cemetery" by Umberto Eco

This book should have been called "Warped Italian Living in 19th Century Paris Hates the Jews, Jesuits, Freemasons and Women."  Don't subject yourself to this waste of time--it's weirdly intriguing and oddly compelling, but it's also disgusting, abhorrent, and confusing and ultimately there's no payoff.  I'm not a fan of happy endings, per se, but in the case of The Prague Cemetery, if the protagonist had gotten the fate he deserved there would at least have been a sense of catharsis. As it is, I got to the end and said out loud, "WTF was THAT?"

“Turn Right at Machu Picchu: Rediscovering the Lost City One Step at a Time,” by Mark Adams

This fascinating and entertaining book is one part travelogue, one part Peruvian and Incan history, and one part biography of Hiram Bingham III, the first Western explorer to “discover” the ancient mountain city of Machu Picchu.  Adams travels the same paths that Bingham did 100 years earlier, on foot, and tells his story with a lot of insight and a healthy dose of humor; and his genuine passion for the subject matter, combined with his first-hand experience of the amazing terrain of the Andes, makes for a compelling and exciting read.  So much so that I did something while reading this book that I very rarely do.  I dragged it out.  I forced myself to stop at the end of the chapter, meting out smaller portions of the book than I’d really have liked to, because part of me wanted to stay up there in the Andes Mountains, surrounded by those amazing stone ruins and an equally amazing landscape for just a little while longer.  I really didn’t want the experience to end.

Adams’ talent for describing the breathtaking scenery is worth the read all by itself.  The sights, sounds and smells of the mountains, deserts, rivers, animals and jungle, to say nothing of the descriptions of the artifacts, architecture and truly mind-boggling engineering of the city of Machu Picchu itself are simply fantastic.  I literally found myself stopping, closing my eyes, and envisioning the majestic vistas, inhaling the wild sage, rosemary and other intoxicating aromas of the forests, and hearing the birds, the rushing water and the cadence of the languages of the native peoples.  There aren’t a lot of people who can make even such a singularly remarkable place come to full color, 3D life via the written word alone, but Adams is one who can.  As I read, I lamented the lack of glossy, panoramic photographs, but only for a few short chapters.  They actually might have detracted from the words, and I decided that they made the right decision by not trying to turn the work into a picture book. 

But these sensual scenes and the long, difficult and dangerous journey to the top of the highest mountain in the range, to the marvel of engineering and architecture that Machu Picchu is, are only part of the story.  There are Incan kings, princesses and warriors, Spanish conquistadors and missionaries, and engrossing tales of their clashes and the inevitable downfall of one whole, enormously advanced civilization at the hands of another.  There are also daring raids, jealous rivalries, and heartbreaking deceptions and cruelties that abound right through the time of Bingham’s expeditions of the early 20^th century that ultimately come face to face with the changing political climates of our own contemporary world.   Indeed, just a few days after finishing this book I noticed a news stories about the Peabody Museum’s decision to finally return most of the artifacts that Bingham himself had brought back to Harvard after his several expeditions to Peru. 

Adams has managed to infect me with his enthusiasm and I’m already half-way through another book about the Andes, although I’m finding the new book not nearly as exciting and readable as “Turn Right…” is.  I may just have to go back and read it again.

"In Pursuit of Silence: Listening for Meaning in a World of Noise," by George Prochnik

If you regularly find yourself wishing you could erase the constant noise of traffic, cell phones, music, TVs, car alarms, sirens, construction work, and all those other distracting noises of our modern world, and just find a nice, quiet place to sit and think and decompress, then you’ll find Prochnik’s latest book of interest.  The author lives in Brooklyn, so he knows a thing or two about the unwelcome sounds of big city life, and this book chronicles his journey to discover just what all this noise does to us, physically and psychologically, and what, if anything, we can do to combat it, or at least learn to better cope with it. 

Scientists and doctors of many stripes, religious ascetics, and noise pollution activists weigh in on the dangers of modern noise levels, the latest soundproofing designs and sound measuring devices, and the overall advantages of quietness and silence.   Did you know that, even after years of experiencing police sirens driving past several times a day, for instance, our eyes will still dilate and our blood pressure will go up, even if we sit quietly and the noise of the siren only barely registers?  Did you realize that headphones are responsible for about 10% of all traffic accidents—because those wearing the headphones don’t hear oncoming traffic and drivers will slam on their brakes to avoid hitting them, creating the perfect opportunity to be rear-ended?  Well, if you didn’t, there’s much, much more to learn about the dangers of noise, and Prochnik shares them all along the way. 

On the other side of the coin, however, he also spends time with professional “boom car” drivers.  Some of them compete to see whose speakers will register the highest dB levels for the longest amount of time.  Prochnik rides along with them, interviews them, and their stories are interesting, even if they will probably fail to move anyone reading this book over to their lifestyle.  There are also sound designers, who create “soundscapes” in shopping areas and restaurants that subconsciously encourage people to spend more or less time in a place and spend more money there as well.  They cite studies that show, for example, that bars blaring music too loudly to talk over will make more money than quiet ones because people drink more, and drink more quickly, when they don’t waste all that time talking to one another.  They also clear out sooner, paving the way for someone new to sit down and start drinking.

There are revelations to be found in each of his adventures, whether walking in the famed Japanese gardens of Portland, the school for the Deaf in Washington, D.C., with the boom car enthusiasts of Tampa, the architects and sound proofers of Copenhagen, or the evolutionary neuroscientists  who are discovering how our earless, early mammalian ancestors “heard” via vibrations that affected  tiny bones in their jaws that would later migrate and become even more sensitive to vibration and eventually develop into modern ears.  All of these tales are interesting and thought provoking, although, ultimately, they are frustrating.

As his research shows, there have always been concerns about noise levels in industrial cities, and many an anti-noise society has been formed and many a piece of legislation passed to endeavor to tamper the worst of the noise and create a quieter, more peaceful environment.  But further studies show that noise levels continue to go up, despite these earnest efforts, and our hearing and overall health continue to decline as a result of it.  In other words, noise pollution seems to be here to stay, and ultimately all we are left to glean from Prochnik’s work is that the best we can do for our own physical and mental health is to steal away as often as we can to a cathedral, quiet reading room, waterfall or park, as a temporary, but much needed and much valued, respite. 

"Nim Chimpsky: The Chimp Who Would Be Human" by Elizabeth Hess

Nim Chimpsky, named in honor of noted linguist Noam Chompsky who claimed that language was specific to humans, was a baby chimpanzee in the early 1970's who was the subject of an experiment titled "Project Nim."  The purpose of the experiment was to place the young chimp in a human home, teach him sign language, raise him as if he were human, and keep track of his language development to see how closely it mirrored that of an average human child. The expectations, based upon many years of similar experiments with chimps and other apes, were that nurture would triumph, or at least significantly impact, nature.  The conclusions were disappointing, with Nim picking up relatively few words and communicating only very basically with his family, and the story of Nim's life after he left the custody of his human family took a depressing turn, with Nim spending a few years in pharmaceutical testing labs.  It is an interesting and unusual story, and I was eager to read Ness' book to learn more. 

I'm fascinated by Nim and the grand experiment that he was born to star in, but I gave up on this book after the first 75 pages or so.  Hess can't seem to decide if she's writing about the experiment itself or about Nim and the general treatment of animals used for experiment, or about the flawed, albeit well-meaning, humans charged with Nim's care and "education."  Each aspect is interesting but Hess does a poor job of weaving these themes into a cohesive whole.  This book reads more like a gossip column than legitimate research.  I'll have to find another source if I hope to learn more about Nim's life.

A New Book About Stieg Larsson

I am waiting until I finish the third book in the Larsson series that began with "The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo," but for those of you who have read all or part of the series, I thought you might be interested in the new book that his long time girlfriend has written about him.  Here's what the NY Times had to say about it.