Summary: Lisa Feldman Barrett’s Seven and a Half Lessons About the Brain is an exceptionally lucid and commendable contribution to popular neuroscience. In this series of concise, highly-accessible essays, Barrett synthesizes a huge field of academic knowledge in a fashion that any literate person can enjoy and benefit from. Her central thesis is that the brain is [...]
Summary: Richard Powers’s Bewilderment is a novel narrated by single father, Theo, who is trying to care for his young son, Robin. Theo is an academic astrobiologist who constructs computer models of how life could evolve on distant exoplanets; he is also a widower whose wife died in a tragic accident. Robin is a troubled child with [...]
Summary: Susanna Clarke’s Piranesi is a fantasy book in which the titular character attempts to understand the fundamental nature of the “House” he inhabits. The House is a seemingly-endless chain of statue-filled Halls rising out of an ocean. As Piranesi learns more about the House and encounters other characters within its labyrinthine structure, he becomes increasingly skeptical [...]
Summary: Hanya Yanagihara’s To Paradise is an exquisitely-crafted and emotionally-gripping novel that covers a huge swath of thematic, historical, and futuristic ground. The story is told in three Books, each of which is loosely connected through the recurrence of certain character names and relationship dynamics that inhabit a single home in Washington Square, New York City. Book [...]
Summary: Rachel Yoder’s Nightbitch is a work of magical realism about a woman who develops the bizarre habit of transforming into a dog and leaving her house to hunt small animals at night. Frustrated with the challenges of mothering her young son and the lack of support from her amiable but largely-absent husband, the “mother” (or MM––we [...]
Summary: Gernot Wagner’s Geoengineering: The Gamble is a primer on the history of solar geoengineering, the state of current research, and possibilities for future experimentation and deployment. In a succinct and balanced fashion, Wagner discusses the various technical ways solar geoengineering might be implemented, as well as the morass of ethical and geopolitical problems that deployment may [...]
Summary: Elizabeth Kolbert’s Under A White Sky is about the history and possible futures of geoengineering. Specifically, Kolbert examines how various geoengineering technologies are being used or may soon be used to combat the worst effects of climate change. Part One, “Down the River,” describes efforts to keep invasive Asian carp out of the Great Lakes, and [...]
There are times when I feel utterly incapable of expressing my appreciation and admiration for a particular book. This is the case with Perhaps the Stars, Ada Palmer’s magnificent conclusion to her Terra Ignota Quartet. Please know, dear reader, that even if you read this entire review, and my reviews of the other three Terra Ignota books (Book 1, [...]
While exploring my new career goal of entering the mental health profession, I recently met a LCSW in my community who offers neurofeedback as a supplement to other therapeutic services. Eager to share her enthusiasm for this technique, she generously gifted me a copy of Jim Robbins’s A Symphony in the Brain. My honest first impression was [...]
When Ezra Klein says something like, “this is the most important book I read this year,” there’s little question as to what I’ll do next. That’s how Kim Stanley Robinson’s The Ministry for the Future made its way into my life, and boy am I glad it did! This remarkable, brilliant, and wildly useful book is one [...]