Editorial Review

From Susan Casey, bestselling author of The Devil’s Teeth, an astonishing book about colossal,  ship-swallowing rogue waves and the surfers who seek them out.

For centuries, mariners have spun tales of gargantuan waves, 100-feet high or taller. Until recently scientists dis­missed these stories—waves that high would seem to violate the laws of physics. But in the past few decades, as a startling number of ships vanished and new evidence has emerged, oceanographers realized something scary was brewing in the planet’s waters. They found their proof in February 2000, when a British research vessel was trapped in a vortex of impossibly mammoth waves in the North Sea—including several that approached 100 feet.

As scientists scramble to understand this phenomenon, others view the giant waves as the ultimate challenge. These are extreme surfers who fly around the world trying to ride the ocean’s most destructive monsters. The pioneer of extreme surfing is the legendary Laird Hamilton, who, with a group of friends in Hawaii, figured out how to board suicidally large waves of 70 and 80 feet. Casey follows this unique tribe of peo­ple as they seek to conquer the holy grail of their sport, a 100­-foot wave.

In this mesmerizing account, the exploits of Hamilton and his fellow surfers are juxtaposed against scientists’ urgent efforts to understand the destructive powers of waves—from the tsunami that wiped out 250,000 people in the Pacific in 2004 to the 1,740-foot-wave that recently leveled part of the Alaskan coast.

Like Jon Krakauer’s Into Thin Air, The Wave brilliantly portrays human beings confronting nature at its most ferocious. ... Read more

Reviews

The Discovery Channel meets ESPN, September 2, 2010

Well written ultra press release for The Laird...Ultimate Wave Guy (TM), September 5, 2010

she's not one of the boys yet, October 22, 2010
the book begins excitingly - susan casey is a tour de force when it comes to research. she knows her subject and does all the homework, ranging over continents to talk to sources in science and industry and sport. she obviously has money, because she spares nothing in expense. she also has an amazing ability to bring esoteric concepts to life by translating the phenomenon of these giant waves into little images and analogies that the reader can relate to - she writes vibrant, muscular prose. what disappointed me: when she finally gets to the big waves and big wave surfers, that boldness seems to dissipate. and she writes like a schoolgirl with a crush on things like laird's hamilton's muscles. no longer the intrepid adventurer, she writes about quivering with fear and nervousness at actually going out with the surfers to the wave break-- but in the flank of it, where all the boats and skis sit, the safe zone. she has a tin ear for her own dialogue - her questions seem to be suddenly a whole 6 octaves stupider, focused on feelings and "how do you feel" questions to men she's already characterized as not much for excess words. women surfers appear almost nowhere in the book. the more it annoyed me, the more i began to see casey as just another goggle-eyed chick in a bikini, and i was disappointed because her book began with such a dramatic crackle of energy. when i researched around and read on laird's website that she made a financial deal to pay for access to his world, i felt even more disappointed.

so i went back to read her first book, about great white sharks. same tendencies. amazing writing, with the same snap crackle pop of good prose. prodigious research, and capacious funds to undertake it. and yet somehow in the middle of the book she becomes all thumbs - afraid to jump from a sailboat to a dinghy, afraid to bait a fishhook, afraid of the dark, afraid of ghosts. afraid her expensive underwear will get taken by a storm. pointing out that she feels sexy wearing fashion rugged gear in the company of men. once again she never really mentions the women interns who are actually living at the farralones - who actually deal every day with the things she finds overwhelming as a visitor. they're there, but the experiences she focuses on are her own, not the experiences of those with more mileage and qualifications under their sexy belts. when a shark researcher shows up (and yes, he's handsome!!! picture included!!) she admires his muscular forearms but seems vague about what he actually does. they go to the aquarium together at the end. meanwhile she manages to lose a sailboat, set off government inquisitions and insurance claims, break federal regulations, and get one of the top research scientists fired from his job, with not so much as a fare-thee-well of regret for being the cause of so much trouble.

i look forward to the day when casey goes through the teeth of an experience and develops a little stamina and endurance of her own. so far both her books are based on having watched specials produced by others on tv - which means it's a recycled experience, more or less. someone else pointed the way, and she picked up well on the clues, but the path was already given. and she comes across as an amazing woman who still gets self-conscious and intimidated being in the world of rugged men. her claim to fame is access, not achievement. she has too much talent to waste on schoolgirl crushes. the best adventure journalists of our time don't just get their la perla underwear dirty - they write having already gone through transforming adventures of their own.

apologies to all concerned. as a woman writing and working in the world of men, i took these observations as a cautionary tale about tone. and tone-deafness. and being naive instead of weatherbeaten.

Waves Are Not Measured In Feet Or Inches But In Increments Of Fear, September 9, 2010

More the book about and from a extreme surfer groupie..., December 1, 2010
...than a book about waves! Susan Casey is obviously fascinated by extreme surfers and spends most of the book on them, their close calls, their family life etc... Now, granted that it is a fascinating life but despite her breathless prose, one does not really get the scale of what these guys are doing: maybe a video of them riding those monsters and talking about would do more justice to their accomplishments. But, in all that, what I had bought the book for, thinking on the basis of early reviews that it would be dealing with the forces creating these monster waves, was basically lost even when eventually she talked to scientists, drawing out of them more their personal experiences than the science of it. A more accurate title would be something like "In pursuit of the ultimate ride"

Surf's UP!!!!!, November 12, 2010
An incredible account of nature in all her unsettled splendor. I was thoroughly caught up in the telling of how the oceans spawn monstrous waves which are both awesome to behold and at the same time can be devastating to people, ships, and the land.

Ms. Casey wrote a wonderful book based on scientific evidence and personal accounts from many people who study, live and play on the world's oceans.

Imagine surfing on a 70ft wall of water. Too hard to imagine? Look up at a 7 or 8 story building, then stand next to it and look straight up. That's where the surfer drops into the moving wave of energy. Can you feel it?

Photos of ships being pummeled by giant waves; of the devastation left behind when monster waves hit land; and of the very brave people who surf these giants are included.

I love this book! I grew up on the east coast and remember some very large waves that hit beaches during stormy weather. The waves described in the book far outweigh my experiences.

A must read for anyone who thinks about global warming, and how weather is dynamically changing the very face of the oceans.

The ocean is full of unpredictable forces and characters too, December 14, 2010
Here we are presented with a concept book that attempts to hold various subjects, incidents and characters together around one unifying piece of information. That the ocean is full of unpredictable forces that create huge waves, some as high at 100 feet. We join the crew and scientist aboard the RRS Discovery in the North Sea as it is hurled about for days. We attend scientific workshops where mathematicians try and study waves. Find out climate change is going to make the oceans even more unpredictable. We learn two large ships sink each week on average (worldwide) and no one ever studies the cause as we do with airplanes that crash. Their disappearance is simply recorded as the results of "bad weather". Susan Casey then layers on top of this what I found to be the complete idiocy of big wave tow surfing with Laird Hamilton of Maui as the main character we are to identify with. He is sort of the Spiderman of surfing. He and his buddies (in conjunction with the surfing industry who at one point offer $100,000 to the first person who successfully rides a 100 foot wave) risk life (several surfers deaths are covered in the narrative) to just get the rush of the big wave. And interestingly enough it does not count if it is not filmed so we also meet an incredible group of surf photographers. So you mix all this into the stew and bounce around a lot and you find yourself loving and hating the book.
For me reading is much the joy of learning things you never knew or would know if you had not read a given book. And there is lots to learn in THE WAVE about the ocean and the phenomena of big waves and I doubt many people have heard of the sport of tow surfing or how one goes about doing it. Or that the biggest waves to surf are found some 100 miles off the coast of San Diego in some 6 foot deep water which covers the tops of a huge mountain range, an area called the Cortes Bank. So the book has much to offer. What seems wrong is its balance. The surfers, especially the hero worship of Laird Hamilton gets old after a while. Does Susan Casey ever think Laird's actions as a father with a family are a bit irresponsible no matter his skill and Zen like personality? Is he really a wave whisperer with no warts?
The interesting character for me at the end of the book is Laird's buddy Brett Lickle who having suffered a major injury which left his left leg with a scar that was "though his entire calf had been melted" (and have being saved by Laird Hamilton) stands on a cliff watching his friends challenge the latest Maui big waves. Lickle made it clear that he no longer misses "the circus, the jeopardy, the nerves" by saying, "The only thing I'll say is that the accident was a kind of ticket out, you know what I mean? What we had was a gang. And you couldn't get out of the gang. There was no way out. There's so much peer pressure like, `come on, you're the man! Let's go!' You can't just walk away because.....you can't. But if you get shot up and almost die, they let you out." For the surfers the big waves are a personal challenge and thrill like climbing a mountain. For the scientist and ships crews the waves are something to respect and fear.
If the subject interests you which I am betting it does I believe you will enjoy the book although I found it very uneven and is a bit to hero worshiping in its promotion of the tow surfing culture.

Scientists, ships and lots of surfing, October 1, 2010
Susan Casey is a captivating writer. Somehow she is able to take the concept of something as comparatively non-threatening as waves and spin it into an interesting tale, highlighting how wrong I was about the pretty waves breaking on the beach.

Casey interviews mariners, Lloyd's of London reps, physicists, and--primarily--surfers about their experiences with and predictions for a huuge wave, dude. The science is a little glossed over but I suspect that it would be difficult to go into wave physics in more depth without the reader glazing over. I really did enjoy the section about Lloyd's of London and their history in insuring ships (and Tina Turner's legs, of course).

The major problem with Casey's approach is I think she got a bit too caught up in the surfing scene. For each original section where she talked to a scientists about their dire predictions for the potential destructivenss of waves, or someone on a ship who had been caught in a wave, etc., she intersperses it with a scene about another wave-chasing day with the surfers, and it got a bit repetitive by the end of the book. I don't know, I think I would have admired the surfers more had I actually known a little less about them by the time the book was over. Anyway, this flaw wasn't enough to drop it to 3 stars. I learned a fair bit about surfing, and I finished the book in awe of the giant waves that could pay us a visit any time they like.

Radical brah, September 27, 2010
My surfing experience is limited to boogie boarding in San Diego when I was 22, but I had many surfing dreams for about a year after that. Whatever it is, it is powerful. Still, like many others I expected less surfers and a little more exploration into others who deal or have dealt with massive waves, but I still enjoyed the book.

More Stories than Science of Waves, but Conveys Their Beauty and Destructive Power., September 2, 2010

Editorial Review

The bestselling book that asks what dogs know and how they think, now in paperback.The answers will surprise and delight you as Alexandra Horowitz, a cognitive scientist, explains how dogs perceive their daily worlds, each other, and that other quirky animal, the human. Horowitz introduces the reader to dogs’ perceptual and cognitive abilities and then draws a picture of what it might be like to be a dog. What’s it like to be able to smell not just every bit of open food in the house but also to smell sadness in humans, or even the passage of time? How does a tiny dog manage to play successfully with a Great Dane? What is it like to hear the bodily vibrations of insects or the hum of a fluorescent light? Why must a person on a bicycle be chased? What’s it like to use your mouth as a hand? In short, what is it like for a dog to experience life from two feet off the ground, amidst the smells of the sidewalk, gazing at our ankles or knees?

Inside of a Dog explains these things and much more. The answers can be surprising—once we set aside our natural inclination to anthropomorphize dogs. Inside of a Dog also contains up-to-the-minute research—on dogs’ detection of disease, the secrets of their tails, and their skill at reading our attention—that Horowitz puts into useful context. Although not a formal training guide, Inside of a Dog has practical application for dog lovers interested in understanding why their dogs do what they do. With a light touch and the weight of science behind her, Alexandra Horowitz examines the animal we think we know best but may actually understand the least. This book is as close as you can get to knowing about dogs without being a dog yourself. ... Read more

Reviews

It's good, but not fantastic. Not many spoilers in this review., September 17, 2009
After having read this book weeks ago (advanced copy), I was left a little unsatisfied. I'd give it 3.5 stars if could.

It's more of a cursory glance at canine cognitive ethology rather than a definitive volume, but if you're looking for a good introductory to canine cognitive ethology, this would be a great starter. The anecdotes are sweet and the science is pretty good, and written in a way that the regular Joe Dog Guardian can read it without breaking his brain.

HOWEVER. There is one VERY glaring "scientific" experiment that I feel she used for a bad conclusion, a conclusion whose inclusion of the flawed scientific experiment betrays the entire premise of the book itself.

In the section on "Hero Dogs" (dogs that have responded to emergencies and saved the lives of their owners and people in general), Horowitz details what she calls a "clever experiment" with dogs where

"owners conspired with the researchers to feign emergencies in the presence of their dogs, in order to see how the dogs responded. In one scenario, owners were trained to fake a heart attack, complete with gasping, a clutch of the chest, and a dramatic collapse. In the second scenario, owners yelped as a bookcase (made of particleboard) descended on them and seemed to pin them on the ground. In both cases, owners' dogs were present, and the dogs had been introduced to a bystander nearby--perhaps a good person to inform if there has been an emergency.

In these contrived setups, the dogs acted with interest and devotion, but not as though there was an emergency...

...In other words, not a single dog did anything that remotely helped their owners out of the predicaments. The conclusion that one has to take from this is that dogs simply do not naturally recognize or react to an emergency situation--one that could lead to danger or death." (pp.239-240)

I really don't understand how she could have come to this conclusion after having written over 200 pages on how a dog sees, smells and relates to its world (the "umwelt" of a dog). She didn't consider that the dogs knew that their owners were faking? She wrote herself that a dog can sense the most minute changes in a person's own body chemistry, right down to sensing cancer and other things like an increase in heart rate or adrenaline. A person faking a heart attack isn't going to have the same body chemistry/physical changes that a person having a REAL heart attack is going to have, so in a sense--there is no faking a heart attack around your dog (believe me, I've tried, LOL--it was only playing/testing, but none of my dogs seemed to care if I plopped over in bed, "dead"). Same goes for adrenaline levels when you're in immediate danger, like when you're drowning (and I believe this was one of the examples she used just before this horrible "deduction" of hers; a dog saved the life of a child that was going to drown). And if a person was faking being hurt under a particleboard bookcase, I'm pretty sure that the dog could sense that, too.

Anyway. That was the only part of the book that REALLY got me going "Hmmmnnn...no." Other than that, it's a good read, but left me wanting more (a whole lot of it sucks you in, but then you're left with a little bit of an unsatisfied thirst for more science and more talk about how dogs are in the world; the end chapter seemed a little rushed to me, too).

It's a Dog's World, October 13, 2009
Scientifically, we might know a lot more about rats than we do about dogs. There are some experimental labs that have dogs as subjects, but lab rats get a lot of scientific attention. Dogs get a lot of domestic attention, but scientific study of dogs, and the ways they get along with humans and with other dogs, has not been a high concern. That may be because we think we know dogs; they are frank and open, and we live closely with them. Alexandra Horowitz thinks we don't know enough, and some of what we know is wrong, and she is out to change our perception of dogs and to do it scientifically. She has to work at making herself a detached observer; she might be a psychologist who has studied cognition in humans, dogs, bonobos, and rhinoceroses, but among the first sentences of her book _Inside of a Dog: What Dogs See, Smell, and Know_ (Scribner) is, "I am a dog person." Is she ever. She didn't deliberately make Pumpernickel, her mixed breed live-in friend (she is an advocate for adopting mutts), a subject of scientific study, but Pump was her entrance, for instance, to the dog park where she could film the interactions of other dogs for acute detailed study later. She gives loving anecdotes of the late Pump in every chapter to illustrate her more objective findings, nicely showing how her scientific examination of dogs paid off in her understanding of her own dog. There are people who worry that scientific examination of any phenomenon takes away the mystery and specialness of the phenomenon, and among the fine lessons in this amusing and enlightening book is that this is far from true.

Dogs do not sense the world we do. To take one of Horowitz's examples, a rose for humans is a thing of visual and olfactory beauty, and also has connotations of a love gift. Dogs are having none of this. It is just another plant among all the plants that surround it; it does not look attractive, and unless some dog has urinated on it recently, it does not smell attractive. Otherwise, the rose doesn't exist. The dog's world is one largely of smells. Everyone knows that dogs are better at detecting odors than we are. It isn't just that they can smell more scents, at thinner concentrations, than we; it's that they gaze at the world by sniffing, and it presents a very different world from ours. Smell, for dogs, has plenty of meanings, but one of them is time. A strong spell is new, a fading one is old. Not only that, but the future may be borne on a breeze if the dog is walking upwind. In scents, the dog doesn't just experience the current scene in an olfactory way, "...but also a snatch of the just-happened and the up-ahead. The present has a shadow of the past and a ring of the future about it." Dogs are evolutionarily descended from wolves, and sometimes dog owners are advised to treat their dogs as lower-caste members of a pack. Horowitz prescribes caution in such interpretations. Dogs are not wolves and have cast away many wolf traits during their evolution. A person (non-wolf) attempting to subdue a dog (non-wolf) in wolf fashion is missing what is special about the human-dog bond. Dogs, for instance, like eye contact; wolves avoid it. There are many experiments described here (some of which Horowitz has herself been in charge of), and one of them involves "gaze following". Dogs can look at our eyes, and can tell where we are looking, so they look over that way, too. The sections of the book that are the most fun are the ones on play. Dogs play more than wolves do, and unlike most animals, they play as adults. It is a bit of a mystery; it isn't essential for dogs to play to get their needed social skills, and it does cost energy and the risk of injury. Horowitz describes the play cues dogs give that can only be seen by humans using very slow video replays, but which keep the play non-aggressive for the participating dogs. Dogs are good at following these rules; a strapping wolfhound and a tiny Chihuahua can negotiate a play session efficiently, with the former handicapping itself to enjoy the mock aggressiveness of the latter.

Horowitz has provided a useful service in her brightly-written summary of experiments and current theories on the minds of dogs. I have an idea that people keep dogs around not just because of their goofy affection for us, or because they are so entertaining, but simply because they are interesting. It is fun to see how a creature who has evolved an intelligence different from our own gets along in the world. Horowitz's book helps explain that interest, and heighten it.

Could not finish it, September 19, 2009
I expected to love this book. Unfortunately, it leaves a lot to be desired.

First, there is surprisingly little information in it. The author touches on each subject so briefly that only the most superficial observations can be made. Dog body language gets maybe two pages and includes such revelations as the meaning of a tucked tailed (discomfort and/or submission). Is there a dog owner in the world who doesn't already know that? Note: if that's new to you and you own a dog, stop reading this review and find a dog trainer immediately. In the 250 pages I managed to read, I found two things of interest: the description of canine vision, and speculation on a potential flaw in experiments on dog intelligence (to wit: dogs know that humans are great providers of food, so if a dog that gives up on the puzzle in front of him and runs over to the researcher for help, maybe he's being smart, not dumb).

Second, the author spends way too much time bemoaning human chauvinism. Apparently, all research into animal behavior is done to shore up our belief that humans are the rightful masters of the earth.

Third, the tone of this book is insistently, forcibly whimsical. Sometimes it hits the right note, and I did find myself laughing out lot a few times, particularly at an anecdote about a doberman put to work guarding a collection of valuable teddy bears. Unfortunately, it's more often grating, and I found myself rolling my eyes at the little vignettes about the author's dog that start every chapter. It truly pains me to write that, as love between a dog and an owner is such a wonderful thing.

Fourth, the text has some odd contradictions, one which is noted by the reviewer below me. The author also starts one chapter raving about dogs' almost preternatural ability to understand our intentions -- and supports this assertion by noting how easy it is to fool a dog into thinking you've thrown a tennis ball.

Finally, I came to the point where I had to put the book down. The author begins to describe dogs' sense of personal space, which she gets almost entirely wrong. She makes a common mistake in saying that dogs have a much smaller radius of personal space than we do. This may be true of ultra-friendly, well-socialized dogs like many retrievers, but it is *not* the norm. Dogs are in fact extremely concerned with personal space, and much of what we know about their communication involves conveying the boundaries of their "bubbles".

The final straw was here: "Repeating itself on sidewalks across the country is a scene that demonstrates the clash of our sense of personal space: the sight of two dog owners as they stand six feet apart, straining to keep their leashed dogs from touching, while the dogs strain mightily to touch each other. Let them touch!" This is horribly bad advice. There are a thousand reasons why two strange dogs should not be allowed to greet each other unrestrainedly, first and foremost that lunging towards another dog is actually very aggressive behavior. Dogs have a plethora of signals indicating that their interest is respectful, including look aways, medium-to-low tail carriage, and a sideways approach. A dog that jumps straight up into another dog's business is socially inept at best, and intending harm at worst.

Instead of this book, I would recommend almost anything by Temple Grandin (who isn't always right either, but has a fascinating perspective), Turid Rugaas, Karen Pryor, or Brenda Aloff.

Best Dog Book Ever, September 17, 2009
As an avid reader of dog literature I approach each new entry in this field with a mix of trepidation and eagerness. Will it merely be a rehash of things I already know? Will it be a sophmoric jumble of memoir and whimsy? Or will this be the book that truly broadens my understanding of the world of canids? Inside of a Dog falls into the last category - plus some.
This book is hands down the finest exploration of canid intelligence that I have ever read. Horowitz writes with a crisp, almost puckish tone - it draws the reader in effortlessly. The book is a delightful blend of an examination of the latest developments in the world of scientific study of dog cognition, and Horowitz's own experiences with her dog as she became one of the scientists who study this animal.
She is one of those writers of whom you think that they could make anything seem interesting. It is to our benefit that she has chosen to do this with dogs.

Fascinating and poetic, September 27, 2009
This is a fascinating book, full of terrific details and interesting research about dogs. So many of the specific elements that she describes still stick in my head. There's great material in here, for instance, about dog's noses and how they smell, and how much they encounter the world through scent and odor. It's not simply that Horowitz tells us that dogs have a powerful sense of smell; it's that she goes well beyond that to help us think about how different their sense of time must be, for instance, since they are smelling old smells along with new ones at the same time. That's just one example of many. The book is chock full of the latest research about dogs, but told in a winning and delightful manner.

That's worth stressing: the writing in this book is great. It's colorful and idiosyncratic. Sometimes the syntax of a sentence is intriguing all on its own. The book is fun to read, in part, just because Horowitz writes so darn well. And, I should add, with a fair bit of whimsy and playfulness. She is a talent as a writer, as well as a scientist. And she makes the science accessible, interesting, and sometimes laugh-worthy.

But the book is also wonderful because it's so full of Horowitz's own enthusiasm for how great dogs are. She's a scientist, but she's hardly clinical. Her excitement about dogs comes pouring out in the small praise-of-dog moments that abound in the book. I feel like I finished the book not only knowing more about dogs (and impressed by all the things that Horowitz knows), but wanting to spend more time with dogs, looking at other people's dogs on the street, and thinking about when we might be able to get a dog of our own again. Her interest in the dog-human relationship -- which is so much the focus in the last chunk of the book -- spills over with her joy in it, and it's an infectious joy.

I can't recommend this book highly enough. I plan to give it as a gift this year to all my dog-owning and dog-loving friends!

Some nice stories, November 5, 2009
Sadly, this is one of many, many books that are filled with assertions, not facts. We now have an enormous amount of information about dogs thanks to scientists who decided that the reason for not studying dogs because they weren't in their "natural habitat" is incorrect. Living with humans IS a dog's natural habitat. They are, in fact, our first domesticated animal. Trustworthy books on the dog include those by Vilmos Csanyi, If Dogs Could Talk, or Lindsay, the three volume treatise, the Handbook of Applied Dog Behavior and Training.

But even better is to do your own work understanding your dog. Buy the Brenda Aloff book, Canine Body Language or the Abrantes book, Encyclopedia of Canine Behavior. Then watch your dog, study your dog, see what he does when presented with various stimuli.

As to horrible mistakes based on, perhaps, just her dog (the fallacy of reasoning from the particular to the general) is Horowitz's comment on meeting another dog. She's right AND she's wrong. When two dogs meet, they SHOULD be allowed to do the "sniff test," etc. on a loose lead. Why? Dogs that are restrained may respond negatively out of what some believe is the "frustration" of not being able to make a dog-like "meet and greet." This is very similar to fence behavior between two dogs which presents the same difficulties for the dog. Two dogs on opposite sides of the fence often start barking and snapping. When allowed to meet without the fence in between, there is a far more subdued "conference." As a member of a rescue group, I have witnessed this over and over and have stopped using the "time-tested" recommended "first have them meet on opposite sides of a fence" approach to introducing one dog to another (A far better approach is to find a partner and walk the two dogs together for a mile or so.)

So her recommendation is, on the surface, a good one, loose lead meeting, good. Unfortunately, two completely clueless dog owners (remember, I'm in rescue) can't possibly tell if their dog or the other one is "targeting" the other dog or just harmlessly anxious to meet this canine passerby. "Oh, but my dog/other dog is wagging their tail." Ah, wagging. Here's an example where a little studying of the Abrantes book would pay dividends. Wagging comes in lots of varieties. Is the tail going around madly in circles or is it high and stiff and wagging back and forth slowly like a metronome...it makes a difference. Did one of the dogs avert their eyes? How about the approach? Did one dog attempt to approach the other dog from the side or are they both coming towards one another head to head. And of course there are the tailless Dobies and Rotties, so you need to look at other signals, ears, lips, body language. I don't normally allow my dogs to meet other dogs on the street because there is too much risk and very little reward. If you like to walk your dog on busy streets, teach your dog to "heel" or "on by" when meeting another dog. See, for example Koehler or Patricia Burnham.

All in all this book is like most of the mass media junk, sitting on shelves in your favorite book store, either filled with anecdotal information or making statements unsupported by anything other than the uncited "study." There are good books on dogs, but they are far and few between, the McConnell series comes to mind as well as Be the Dog by Duno, The Dog's Mind, by Fogle or the Domestic Dog by Serpell.

But if you have a dog, then you really have the best available information curled up next to you. Just don't draw conclusions based on "human logic" or what's more accurately called anthropomorphisms. What I mean, for example, is the call we often get (by the wife) about a recently adopted dog, that the dog is urinating in front of the husband as soon as he walks in the door. And the husband (it's invariably the husband) is sure that the dog is doing it for spite and no matter how loudly he screams at the dog, the dog continues to pee as soon as he walks in the house. Well I am sure most of you know what's going on here. Dogs don't do anything for spite (their range of emotions are far simpler than ours). The dog is being deferential. It's what dogs do to show submissiveness to a senior, more dominant animal. So we tell the wife to tell the husband to stop screaming at the dog and make believe he actually is happy to see the pup...or feel free to return the dog to us and go out and get a nice stuffed animal

As to this book, unless you're in the book store, sipping a latte while skimming the book (and looked up the reviews via wi-fi...or you're a relative...pass...

FABULOUS E-BOOK FOR ALL DOG GUARDIANS!, August 9, 2010
I am a long time dog guardian and dog lover and have read many dog-related books. This book is about the best I have ever experienced in terms of improving one's understanding of dogs and their actions. Not only was the book well-written in an interesting and easy to understand style, the audiobook was also exceptionally well spoken. I learned many new things from this book, and I also appreciated the many references to dog rescue groups and the promotion of mixed breed dogs at shelters/rescues over pure breed dogs as family pets.

Nosing Out the World, April 23, 2010
Alexandra Horowitz, the author of this book, has a PhD in cognitive science and studied cognition in rhinos, bonobos and dogs. As the order indicates, she came to dogs last as objects of scientific study and in this her career mirrors the efforts of cognitive scientists generally who (as she notes in her book) have only turned seriously to dogs in the last twenty-five or so years, perhaps because the nearly omnipresent dog was mistakenly thought to be a simple and uncomplicated creature. As most dog owners will tell you, nothing could be more wrongheaded than to think of dogs as simpletons of the animal kingdom.

Using the findings of many dog studies, mostly from the last thirty years, Horowitz shows that dogs are marvelously complex creatures whose senses and brains are exquisitely attuned to their environment, a large part of which is humans. Dogs know their world well, and humans intimately. Part of this comes from the intense focus that dogs bring to bear on us and part from the array of extraordinary sensory equipment that they use to focus. Dogs' sense of smell, for example, is (practically speaking) infinitely better than ours and easily able to detect chemical "tells" about our emotions, state of mind, and past and present activities.

Horowitz takes us on a grand tour of dogs' sensory apparatus and how it compares to the human equivalent. She explores what is known of their social behavior, including the many signs and signals they use in dealing with one another and with us; and she discusses their emotions and psychological processes, including cognition and the possibility of canine self-awareness.

Horowitz's overriding purpose is to let the reader share something of how a dog actually perceives, interacts with, and communicates with the world and other creatures. She repeatedly points out that we do a disservice to the complexity and uniqueness of dogs when we either anthropomorphize them (see them as limited humans) or treat them as insensate creatures which exist merely for our convenience.

Horowitz does all this in a direct and interesting style that neither over complicates things nor talks down to the general audience for which it is intended. She gives many clear factual examples to illustrate her points (providing factoids for those inclined to amaze their friends). With her main narrative she also mixes frequent mini-essays talking about her personal relationship with her obviously much loved dog Pumpernickel (usually called "Pump"), revealing herself as a dog lover as well as a dog scientist. She also provides simplified notes for those who may wish to explore her sources.

This is an excellent, well-written and delightful book.

Popular book, if you want science..., October 7, 2009
A scientific book on the dog's mind is 'Canine Ergonomics' by William Helton (2009).Canine Ergonomics: The Science of Working Dogs. Reacting to other viewer's comments, keep in mind that this is a popular book. If you are looking for a scientific book on how the dog's mind works read Canine Ergonomics.

Inside a Dog...still unsure, November 1, 2009
The book was strong on anecdote and personal experience but a bit short on hard science and firm vet science. ... Read more

Editorial Review

In The Mind’s Eye, Oliver Sacks tells the stories of people who are able to navigate the world and communicate with others despite losing what many of us consider indispensable senses and abilities: the power of speech, the capacity to recognize faces, the sense of three-dimensional space, the ability to read, the sense of sight. For all of these people, the challenge is to adapt to a radically new way of being in the world.

There is Lilian, a concert pianist who becomes unable to read music and is eventually unable even to recognize everyday objects, and Sue, a neurobiologist who has never seen in three dimensions, until she suddenly acquires stereoscopic vision in her fifties.

There is Pat, who reinvents herself as a loving grandmother and active member of her community, despite the fact that she has aphasia and cannot utter a sentence, and Howard, a prolific novelist who must find a way to continue his life as a writer even after a stroke destroys his ability to read.

And there is Dr. Sacks himself, who tells the story of his own eye cancer and the bizarre and disconcerting effects of losing vision to one side.

Sacks explores some very strange paradoxes—people who can see perfectly well but cannot recognize their own children, and blind people who become hyper-visual or who navigate by “tongue vision.” He also considers more fundamental questions: How do we see? How do we think? How important is internal imagery—or vision, for that matter? Why is it that, although writing is only five thousand years old, humans have a universal, seemingly innate, potential for reading?

The Mind’s Eye is a testament to the complexity of vision and the brain and to the power of creativity and adaptation. And it provides a whole new perspective on the power of language and communication, as we try to imagine what it is to see with another person’s eyes, or another person’s mind. ... Read more

Reviews

The wonder of our visual sense, revealed through its pathologies, September 22, 2010

Focused and Fascinating, October 1, 2010

It's All in Your Mind, September 24, 2010

Not for your common Joe, October 22, 2010

Fascinating window into the eye's mind, October 2, 2010

Extraordinary Real Life Adventures in Perception, October 14, 2010

Interesting Accounts, September 24, 2010

An eye-opener for those interested in the mind., October 13, 2010

Ode to the Long-Term Adaptabililty and Plasticity of the Brain, even after Injury, October 27, 2010

Stories About Maladies of Recognition: Not As Absorbing As Dr. Sacks's Previous Books, November 12, 2010

Editorial Review

CK-12 Biology I is a textbook for high school students covering cell biology, genetics, evolution, ecology, and physiology. ... Read more

Reviews

A Good Introductory Biology Textbook, November 1, 2010
Biology is one of the fundamental scientific disciplines, and in terms of the impact on our everyday life it is perhaps one of the most important. It is also one of the scientific disciplines with the greatest amount of new research, and hardly a year passes without some new profound discovery being made. Sometimes even the experts are hard to keep up with all of the recent developments, and new and updated textbooks are published on a yearly basis. Unfortunately, the prices of new textbooks have been steadily increasing over the years, so it is incredibly refreshing to come across a well-organized free textbook that can be used in introductory biology classes.

This is by and large a very approachable and well presented introductory biology textbook. It is written with an advanced high school student or beginning college student in mind. Topics covered include foundational topics, chemical basis of life, cell structure and function, photosynthesis, cell division and reproduction, genetics, biotechnology, evolutionary theory, biological classification, ecology, human body, various tissues and organs, and many others.


Each chapter ends with a several questions, most of which are not quantitative. In fact, this is not a very quantitatively oriented textbook, and it stresses critical and scientific thinking over quantitative skills. However, it is a very interesting and well organized textbook and provides an excellent introduction to biology. In addition to questions, there are also numerous vocabulary terms listed at the end of each chapter. These provide the student with an opportunity to systematize the knowledge gained in the preceding chapter. There are also numerous references for further study and links to other outside resources.

The book is replete with many illustrations and photographs, and they are generally of high quality and on the average much better than in most other CK-12 textbooks.

This book is available under the Creative Commons License through the CK-12 foundation, which means it can be reprinted, modified and resold if necessary. It is also a fairly large file, the pdf version being over 2000 pages long, so be prepared for a long download time.

The Kindle formatting of this textbook leaves something to be desired. The book was originally typeset in LaTeX, and this did not translate all that smoothly into the Kindle format. I've found that getting this textbook on other e-readers or computers in the epub format rendered it much more satisfactorily.

This is not the flashiest textbook that you will come across, but in my opinion it gets the job done.
... Read more

Editorial Review

CK-12 Life Science covers seven units: Understanding Living Things; Cells: The Building Blocks of Life; Genetics and Evolution; Prokaryotes, Protists, Fungi, and Plants; The Animal Kingdom; The Human Body; and Ecology. ... Read more

Reviews

A Decent Introductory Life Science Textbook, November 1, 2010
"Life Science" is a combination of various scientific disciplines that deal living organism and their environments. Different branches of life science encompass botany, zoology, marine biology, microbiology, virology, cell biology, morphology, physiology, immunology, neuroscience, developmental biology, embryology, genetics, biochemistry, molecular biology, epidemiology, ecology, biogeography, and population biology.

This is by and large a very approachable and well presented introductory life science textbook, and it is written with a high school student or beginning college student in mind. Topics covered include scientific theories in general, the theory of evolution, tools of science, cells, genetics, prokaryotes, fungi, plants, invertebrates, fishes, amphibians, reptiles, birds, mammals, animal behavior, animal tissues, reproductive systems, ecosystems, and the environmental problems.

Each chapter ends with a several questions, most of which are not quantitative. In fact, this is not a very quantitatively oriented textbook, and it stresses critical and scientific thinking over quantitative skills. However, it is a very interesting and well organized textbook and provides an excellent introduction to earth science. In addition to questions, there are also numerous vocabulary terms listed at the end of each chapter. These provide the student with an opportunity to systematize the knowledge gained in the preceding chapter. There are also numerous references for further study and links to other outside resources.

The book is replete with many illustrations and photographs, and they are generally of high quality and on the average much better than in most other CK-12 textbooks.

This book is available under the Creative Commons License through the CK-12 foundation, which means it can be reprinted, modified and resold if necessary. It is also a fairly large file, so be prepared for a longish download.

The Kindle formatting of this textbook leaves something to be desired. The book was originally typeset in LaTeX, and this did not translate all that smoothly into the Kindle format. I've found that getting this textbook on other e-readers or computers in the epub format rendered it much more satisfactorily.

This is not the flashiest textbook that you will come across, but in my opinion it gets the job done.
... Read more

Editorial Review

A landmark in reference publishing and overseen and authenticated by the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of Natural History, Natural History presents an unrivaled visual survey of Earth's natural history. Giving a clear overview of the classification of our natural world-over 6,000 species-Natural History looks at every kingdom of life, from bacteria, minerals, and rocks to fossils to plants and animals. Featuring a remarkable array of specially commissioned photographs, Natural History looks at thousands of specimens and species displayed in visual galleries that take the reader on an incredible journey from the most fundamental building blocks of the world's landscapes, through the simplest of life forms, to plants, fungi, and animals. ... Read more

Reviews

The Ideal Guide to the Livin' World!!!, October 17, 2010
I am a man of nature.
So it's no suprise that it only took two minutes after it's discovery to officially want to add this to my compendium collection.
After a week, I manage to find and buy this book at Barnes n' Noble (cost me $50 - you'll get a much better deal on here!)

First off, I'm going to tell you know (though you probably already know), this book is FREAKIN' BIG!!!! Might as well be a college textbook! You'll need to find some (worthy) space in your bookshelf for it.

Secondly, the sheer number of species (and specimens, mind you) inside these covers in astounding. Compare a book from the same series (DK's Animal for example), which had about 2,000 species in it.
This tome has 5,000 (something you need to see in order to grasp the sheer quantity)! And not just animals... where else could you find a book with rocks, minerals, fossils, shells, microbes, fungi, plants, protists, and animals all in one!
It's taxonomically organized (with the system for rocks and minerals as well) starting with Bacteria & Archaea first, then Protists (yes, it uses the kingdom Protista - something I don't usually favor), then the plants take over for a good portion of the book (any lover of flowers is going to flip out), fungi proceed, then finally come the animals (which takes up half of the book - and I don't even mind). One thing I really enjoy is the fact that this is one of the only plant books I've seen were everything isn't organized for gardeners. And there are some very cool rocks and minerals in here.

Third, the format is reminicent of a Sears/Walmart catalog - the species group is listed, and then specimens abound to every last corner of the page. The photos (and illustrations for some) are wonderful and very clear.

A few "not favorable" things I might add - not all animal groups get coverage, most entries that cover trees do not show the entire plant but simply a branch or leaf, the fish diversity is somewhat limited, and I've already mentioned the kingdom Protista and the dominating Animalia.

But you shouldn't pay attention to these things, because if you're looking for a book with a complete diversity of the world we live in - I would recommend this.

The natural world, October 22, 2010
`Natural History' is, as it claims a visual guide, perhaps not the ultimate, but close and not everything - almost. Its chapter on fish seems a little lean, but most will not notice.
It is a big heavy, over 7 pounds, coffee table book. It does have some stunning pictures and lots of colored illustrations. Most of what it includes are sections on each page with coloured charts, pictures, and illustrations of many elements of the natural world; rocks, ferns, a variety of snails, birds of prey - it is filled with almost any living thing you could think of.
The maps are well done and it will do much to clear up any confusion one has on classifications. You could even accomplish much identification yourself of rocks and birds using its clear pictures.

There are sections on; the living earth, minerals, rocks and fossils, microscopic life, plants, fungi and animals including invertebrates, chordates, fish, amphibians, reptiles, birds and mammals.
There is a glossary and an index. It is an excellent reference and learning tool and of course has the expertise of the Smithsonian Institute behind it.
This is a book young children could learn from, but adults would not feel `talked" down to.
It would make a great addition to your home, school or as a Christmas present that should get much use.

ANOTHER GREAT DK BOOK!!!!!!!!!!, November 14, 2010
The DK science books have set a standard that is hard to beat - and this is one of their best. Great photography and graphic design and just enough info to get you started on any subject. I can't reccomend this book with enough superlatives. An absolute joy!

Another amazing book from DK, October 23, 2010
I have many of the DK books--History, Animal, Earth, Animal Life, Universe, etc. This book doesn't let you down. It is packed full of beautiful photographs of all different kinds of wildlife. I look at it for hours, and then go back to it and look at it again. It is amazing!!

Great deal, December 4, 2010
The order for this book was filled very quickly. When the book arrived it was in great shape. The book is filled with lots and lots of useful information. It's a "must have" book for any artist! ... Read more

Editorial Review

Reviews

Loved it!, January 18, 2007
My six year old daughter asked for a coloring book for Christmas and is really into horses. She was so excited to receive this book. The pages are thick and of nice quality. The brown pen she used slightly bled through onto the backside but not enough to ruin the picture. She uses colored pencils or crayons on most of the pictures.

Magnificent Horses, September 16, 2007
Page after page of beautifully drawn horses in various poses, many of them are action poses.

A few of the pictures feature riders but most are just of the horses--which was my preference.

The drawings are large and easy to color, and there is also lots of background with mountains, trees, rocks and even rivers/streams.

I am an adult colorer, but I think anyone from about the age of six would enjoy coloring in this book.

I highly recommend it.

Great coloring book!, April 9, 2007
I bought this as a gift for my step daughter (age 5), along with several other coloring books; Dragons Coloring Book & Gargoyles and Medieval Monsters Coloring Book. Of the three she has taken most to horses. It is a fairly easy book to color out of, but not annoyingly easy. We have spent a lot of time coloring together, and having good books like these make that time an enjoyable way to bond with your children, while teaching them the value of prime colors and staying in the lines. :)

If you like horses You'll love this book, October 22, 2007
This is a very good coloring book. John Green is an excellent artist and with a little colored pencil or crayons the pictures come alive. I bought this book for myself, and I love it.

Great for older kids, December 20, 2007
This is a beautiful book that an older kid could really appreciate. I bought it for my 3 year old because she's very into horses right now but she will not do it any justice. An older child with artistist ability would love turning these black & white images into stunning pictures. Would work great with colored pencils as the pages are much nicer than the usual "crayon" type pages of kids coloring books.

Great coloring book!, July 10, 2007
My daughter, a seven year old horse lover, thinks this book is the greatest. It went missing for a couple of days and she was distraught! It has beautiful horse pictures.

Great Coloring Book, August 16, 2009
I shopped around for a coloring book about horses that was not "cutesy", to no avail. This coloring book has interesting pictures of beautifully drawn horses on each page. The cover and pages are of high quality materials. I was very pleased to give this coloring book as a gift.

coloring book, January 19, 2009
Very nice book of beautiful horses and backgrounds to color, good quality paper. I'm very pleased with my choice...you will be too.

Perfect for horse "happy" children., July 4, 2009
The Wonderful World of Horses coloring book is perfect for children who adore horses. The drawings are large enough that even our youngest grandchild (3)can do well with the detail. All of the kids love this coloring book and bringing the pages to life.

Wonderful idea!, March 27, 2009
I am so glad I ordered this book! As I was packing for a visit in another state I turned to Amazon for a quick gift for my granddaughter-a surprise.
The order came very quickly and was just what I needed. There is beautiful detail in the pages to be colored. She was excited to receive a book which clearly required more skill. She is eight years old and this was perfect for her as she is a meticulous coloring fan. It also was in stark contrast to the easier one her little sister got, so she felt her talents had been recognized. ... Read more

Editorial Review

It’s December 1997, and a man-eating tiger is on the prowl outside a remote village in Russia’s Far East. The tiger isn’t just killing people, it’s annihilating them, and a team of men and their dogs must hunt it on foot through the forest in the brutal cold. As the trackers sift through the gruesome remains of the victims, they discover that these attacks aren’t random: the tiger is apparently engaged in a vendetta. Injured, starving, and extremely dangerous, the tiger must be found before it strikes again.

As he re-creates these extraordinary events, John Vaillant gives us an unforgettable portrait of this spectacularly beautiful and mysterious region. We meet the native tribes who for centuries have worshipped and lived alongside tigers, even sharing their kills with them. We witness the arrival of Russian settlers in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, soldiers and hunters who greatly diminished the tiger populations. And we come to know their descendants, who, crushed by poverty, have turned to poaching and further upset the natural balance of the region.

This ancient, tenuous relationship between man and predator is at the very heart of this remarkable book. Throughout we encounter surprising theories of how humans and tigers may have evolved to coexist, how we may have developed as scavengers rather than hunters, and how early Homo sapiens may have fit seamlessly into the tiger’s ecosystem. Above all, we come to understand the endangered Siberian tiger, a highly intelligent super-predator that can grow to ten feet long, weigh more than six hundred pounds, and range daily over vast territories of forest and mountain.

Beautifully written and deeply informative, The Tiger circles around three main characters: Vladimir Markov, a poacher killed by the tiger; Yuri Trush, the lead tracker; and the tiger himself. It is an absolutely gripping tale of man and nature that leads inexorably to a final showdown in a clearing deep in the taiga. ... Read more

Reviews

Gripping and informative, April 26, 2010

A Lyrical, Insightful, and rather Exhaustive Analysis, June 5, 2010

A Digressive Tale, May 12, 2010

This Tiger really burns bright, September 6, 2010
The remarkable thing about John Vaillant's The Tiger is not that it's a total page-turner, or that he manages to stuff the Tiger with so much fascinating natural and political history that you come away with three or four points added to your IQ, or that his lush descriptions are sensuous without being cloying and muscular without being macho, or that his characters are indelible and engaging and worthy of The Dirty Dozen or Where Eagles Dare, or even that the tiger and its hunters will relentlessly stalk your consciousness when you aren't reading the book (quite a trick in attention-challenged times). It's that you will, without even knowing it, and even if you don't want to, find yourself suddenly occupying the tiger's world, and seeing it through his eyes, feeling its wounds and its anguish and its hatred, and, above all, rooting for it against your fellow humans. Let this book hunt you down and pounce on you. You won't regret it.

Loved it but not as described., June 17, 2010

Incredible!, August 23, 2010

Siberian tigers - an amazing story, August 5, 2010

A History Lesson, May 17, 2010

Good, but too ambitious and strains credibility, September 26, 2010
This is a fascinating true story of the environmental and economic forces that bring man and tiger into conflict, but it ranges too far in trying to bring these threads together. The basic story is pretty simple: post-perestroika poverty in southeast Russia combines with Chinese demand for natural resources and exotic animals to incentivize poaching and other environmental depredation. This, in turn, leads to scenarios in which the tiger sometimes wins, at least temporarily. In this particular case, a tiger kills and eats a poacher who had shot it. Injured and unable to hunt its normal prey, it kills and eats another human before it is killed by authorities.

Pros:
(1) All you ever wanted to know about human-tiger relations, from prehistory forward.
(2) All you ever wanted to know about the effects of communism and perestroika on south-eastern Russia.
(3) Sympathetic presentation of all the actors. The abject poverty of many of the humans involved makes it easier to understand why they did the things they did.

Cons:
(1) See #1 and #2 above, "and more". The story is stretched thin by too much backstory about too many people and human-tiger encounters. These digressions hurt the flow.
(2) As the book progresses, the tiger is presented as a sort of demiurge, exercising supernatural power over the actions of the humans.

Negatives aside, the book is still worth a read.

Informative, But Tries To Do Too Much, August 14, 2010

Editorial Review

ZooBorns showcases the newest and cutest animal babies from accredited zoos and aquariums around the world. With interesting animal facts and background stories on the featured babies, ZooBorns illustrates the connections between zoo births and conservation initiatives in the wild. ... Read more

Reviews

buy this book for everyone you know, October 29, 2010
I've waited months for this, and it didn't let me down. It's a fundraiser for ZooBorns.com and the Association of Zoos and Aquariums Conservation Endowment Fund. If you don't know the website, check it out immediately, then buy the book (or the children's version ZooBorns!).
It's a perfect example of what the web should be and this book is a delightful way to enjoy it offline. Gorgeous pictures, with just enough information to make you want more- but it's all about the pictures.

Adorable, a Perfect Gift!, November 24, 2010
ZooBorns features baby animals from zoos and aquariums around the world, and discusses the role that these births play in conservation efforts. Beautiful photos of animals are accompanied by descriptions that include the dates of births, their endangered status, and background stories for each baby.

In ZooBorns pages, you will find well known animals like orangutans, giraffes and kangaroos. However, you will also see photos of animals like the crowned sifaka and the rock hyrax that I've personally never seen or heard of before.

ZooBorns is more of a photo/coffee table book than one that required dedicated reading. The images are too adorable for words and you will definitely find an animal or two that you knew nothing before opening this book. It's likely to appeal to adults and children alike, and will surely spark a conversation in any room!

Zooborn fun for "kids" of all ages!, November 9, 2010
I own both of the ZooBorns books and have bought a bunch of extras to give as Christmas gifts to my niece and nephews. The photos are precious and I love the additional information about each of the animals featured. This book is now prominently displayed on our coffee table. If you are looking for a fun little gift for an animal lover - of any age - you can't go wrong with ZooBorns! ... Read more

Editorial Review

Our relationship with the ocean is undergoing a profound transformation. Whereas just three decades ago nearly everything we ate from the sea was wild, rampant overfishing combined with an unprecedented bio-tech revolution has brought us to a point where wild and farmed fish occupy equal parts of a complex and confusing marketplace.We stand at the edge of a cataclysm; there is a distinct possibility that our children's children will never eat a wild fish that has swum freely in the sea. In Four Fish, award-winning writer and lifelong fisherman Paul Greenberg takes us on a culinary journey, exploring the history of the fish that dominate our menus---salmon, sea bass, cod and tuna-and examining where each stands at this critical moment in time. He visits Norwegian mega farms that use genetic techniques once pioneered on sheep to grow millions of pounds of salmon a year.He travels to the ancestral river of the Yupik Eskimos to see the only Fair Trade certified fishing company in the world.He investigates the way PCBs and mercury find their way into seafood; discovers how Mediterranean sea bass went global; Challenges the author of Cod to taste the difference between a farmed and a wild cod; and almost sinks to the bottom of the South Pacific while searching for an alternative to endangered bluefin tuna. Fish, Greenberg reveals, are the last truly wild food - for now. By examining the forces that get fish to our dinner tables, he shows how we can start to heal the oceans and fight for a world where healthy and sustainable seafood is the rule rather than the exception. ... Read more

Reviews

The Story of the Fish in Your Dinner

The limits of the sea

Should appeal to a wide audience

An Eye-Opening Look into the Complexity of our Present and Future Fisheries

"Why Did You Close the Season? We Haven't Caught Them All Yet."

A cautionary tale for our times

Editorial Review

Richard Dawkins transformed our view of God in his blockbuster, The God Delusion, which sold more than 2 million copies in English alone. He revolutionized the way we see natural selection in the seminal bestseller The Selfish Gene. Now, he launches a fierce counterattack against proponents of "Intelligent Design" in his latest New York Times bestseller, The Greatest Show on Earth. "Intelligent Design" is being taught in our schools; educators are being asked to "teach the controversy" behind evolutionary theory. There is no controversy. Dawkins sifts through rich layers of scientific evidence—from living examples of natural selection to clues in the fossil record; from natural clocks that mark the vast epochs wherein evolution ran its course to the intricacies of developing embryos; from plate tectonics to molecular genetics—to make the airtight case that "we find ourselves perched on one tiny twig in the midst of a blossoming and flourishing tree of life and it is no accident, but the direct consequence of evolution by non-random selection." His unjaded passion for the natural world turns what might have been a negative argument, exposing the absurdities of the creationist position, into a positive offering to the reader: nothing less than a master’s vision of life, in all its splendor. ... Read more

Reviews

Not quite the book I expected, October 13, 2009
As a biologist (and evolutionist), I am one of those who did not need to be convinced by this book. I am already there. So, I was at somewhat of a disadvantage in trying to estimate how this book might affect the average creationist and IDer. One problem is that creationists come in several stripes----and I don't mean the usual division of creationists into young-Earth vs old-Earth etc. I mean the professional creationists such as some clergy (including TV evangelists) and foundation employees etc with a financial or power stake in maintaining creationism vs some people who have an ignorant, but honest, attachment to creationism for what might be called religious reasons (in spite of Dawkins and everything else) vs the hard-core religionists who care not a whit about evidence and who think that "faith" is faith, no matter what the evidence against it. Dawkins probably will not reach the first and third of these groups. Whether he is able to reach the second remains to be seen. Those people with an ignorant but honest attachment to creationism are largely unlikely to read (much less buy) a book such as this. I am at somewhat of a loss to know who this book targets. The Hell-fire and Damnation preachers will just ignore it and go on preaching---they have too much of a good thing in power and money flow to give it up by becoming honest. Dawkins needs to target the mainline Christian clergy. But then, who goes to church to listen to sermons on evolution?
As for the book itself, it took me a while to get used to the chatty style, mostly in first person, that characterizes Dawkin's later books. What Dawkins presents is only PART of "The Evidence for Evolution". He mentions once or twice that he had to jettison discussion on some point or another that would have added to the discussion (and to the length of the book). But if there is a lot of evidence, why not present all of it? He leaves out, for example, the embryologic evidence for skeletal homologies. Basically he only presents pictures of several skeletons and expects hard-core creationists to accept that bone X in a bat is homologous to bone X in a whale, etc. The creationist would say they these bones only appear to be homologous because are used in similar ways. Show the embryologic homologies and even the DNA evidence and the case is unassailable (to an honest mind). But Dawkins does not do this. Also, he does not present a detailed discussion of branchial arch homologies in fish and higher vertebrates. It may be mentioned (I don't recall), but a full discussion would have been unanswerable. Ditto for jaw and earbone homologies. Dawkins did not discuss retroviruses and missed a big opportunity there. Perhaps he thought that at some point he had reached overkill. I think the book is approximately a 90% effort, with too much good stuff left out.

Evolution is a Fact and Dawkins Proves it!, September 23, 2009
Usually authors will start out their writing careers making a general case on behalf of something, and then later deal with the specific objections as they arise. But not Richard Dawkins. As the leading prolific evolutionary author in our generation he finally got around to writing the book that many authors would've written first, this one. Since up until now he has not set forth the evidence for evolution as a whole, he calls this book "my missing link" in his chain of books, and it's long overdue.

Taking the title from the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, Dawkins begins by asking us to imagine what it would be like to be a European history teacher who is "continually faced with belligerent demands to give equal time" in his classes to Holocaust deniers. To him that would be what it's like to teach the scientific fact of evolution around the world, especially in America, where 40% of us deny that humans evolved from other animals and who claim instead we were all created as distinct species not more than 10,000 years ago. Just like the Holocaust deniers these people are "history-deniers" too. The antidote to that kind of ignorant thinking is this present work, which presents "the positive evidence that evolution is a fact" (p.6). Many bishops and theologians embrace evolution as a fact, even if some of them accept it begrudgingly.

Who is he trying to reach? The creationist "history-deniers" themselves, but more importantly those who find themselves inadequately prepared to argue the case for evolution (p. 8).

He claims: "Evolution is a fact. Beyond reasonable doubt, beyond serious doubt, beyond sane, informed, intelligent doubt, beyond doubt evolution is a fact. The evidence for evolution is at least as strong as the evidence for the Holocaust, even allowing for eyewitnesses to the Holocaust. It is the plain truth that we are cousins of chimpanzees, somewhat more distant cousins of monkeys, more distant cousins still of aardvarks and manatees, yet more distant cousins of bananas and turnips...continue the list as long as desired...It didn't have to be true, but it is. We know this because a rising flood of evidence supports it. Evolution is a fact, and this book will demonstrate it. No reputable scientist disputes it, and no unbiased reader will close the book doubting it." (pp. 8-9).

These are very large claims he's making. Are they justified? Yes, I think so. I challenge the creationists to place this comprehensively argued book, which is illustrated by many diagrams and glossy full colored pictures, next to what a few ancient superstitious people wrote in the Bible and see which one makes the most sense. My bet is that if believers are truly interested in the facts they will see evolution is indeed a fact.

Dawkins knows how to communicate, he knows where to begin his case with dog breeding, and he knows science. It's practically all here within the pages of this book. The reason why we don't see evolutionary change is because it takes place slowly over generations, but dog breeders can do it quickly and efficiently. "Every breed of dog," Dawkins writes, "from dachshund to Dalmatian, from boxer to borzoi, from poodle to Pekinese, from Great Dane to Chihuahua, has been caved, chiseled, kneaded, moulded, not literally as flesh and bone but in its gene pool....The relevance to natural evolution is that, although the selecting agent is man and not nature, the process is otherwise the same." (p. 34).

With regard to flowers, birds and insects make these changes rather than humans, naturally, not artificially, just like the wind did before them: "Hummingbird eyes, hawk-moth eyes, butterfly eyes, hoverfly eyes, bee eyes are critically cast over wild flowers, generation after generation, shaping them, colouring them, swelling them, patterning and stippling them, in almost exactly the same way as human eyes later did with our garden varieties; and with dogs, cows, cabbages and corn." (p. 52). And he asks us: "If so much evolutionary change can be achieved in just a few centuries or even decades, just think what might be achieved in ten or a hundred million years?" (p. 37).

To believers who object that the earth isn't old enough Dawkins marshals overwhelming evidence that it is billions of years old, along with evidence piled upon still more evidence to show evolutionary development of life on earth is indeed the greatest show on earth, and he is clearly in awe of it.

There are a few great books on evolution but this is a superior book long overdue by today's leading communicator of science. You should get it and think through it, especially if you're a "history-denier." Face the evidence and then change your beliefs. It's the intellectually honest thing to do. Then you too will thank Dawkins like so many of us have for his writing in these areas.

A good book, but didn't live up to its subtitle, September 28, 2009
This book is the latest among a long list of evolutionary texts by Dawkins. By his own admission, this book differs from his previous works. While his other books assume the truth of evolution, and thus, sought to answer specific and common criticisms against evolution (often espoused by creationists), this is the first time Dawkins has attempted to lay out the actual evidence for its acceptance by the scientific community.

His book was well written, articulated in a readable style, and quite enjoyable. In fact, I found it difficult to put the book down. Dawkins provides a good general view of why scientists accept evolution and a good case for the plausbility of natural selection as the vehicle for adaptive change. However, I do have some criticisms of his book, which prevented me from giving it 5 stars, especially if I view it from the mindset of a biblical literalist (a view I once shared many decades ago... and these are the people who need the most convincing).

My number one complaint is that he did not provide much in evidence, and where he did provide evidence it was short on detail. For instance, in Chapter 2, Dawkins mentions that all dog breeds are descended from the wolf. Similarly, broccoli, cauliflower, kale, and other commonly distinct vegetables today are all descendants of the wild cabbage. While this might seem evident to the scientifically literate, if you don't accept evolution, you might need some convincing to show that this is true. But he doesn't provide evidence or even an explanation of how we know that dogs descended from wolves or broccoli from cabbage. He merely asserts this as evidence and then moves on to chapter 3, which concerns natural selction.

In chapter 3, he discusses flowers and insects (and birds) and presents this as evidence for evolution (specifically by natural selection). But he doesn't provide much explanation of how we know this to be true. For instance, why should we conclude that this arrangement between pollen producing flower and pollinating insect to be the result of co-evolution? How do we know that the pollen producing flower was not always the way it is and that the pollinating insect was not always the way it is and that these two merely "found" or discovered one another, in essence, falling into and exploiting a niche that was always present? [This might seem crazy, but this was actually used in an argument by a creationist]

Another criticism. He was careful to define the distinction between a scientific theory and a mere hypothesis or conjecture. Yet through much of the first few chapters of his book, he is short on evidence and long on speculation. For instance, he mentions the Heika japonica crab, with the resemblance of a samurai warrior on the back of its shell. While Carl Sagan states that this was the result of natural selection, Dawkins states it probably was not; it was likely coincidence. But this very case has often been cited as evidence for evolution (by selection). Is this evidence of evolution or not? And if not, then why is Dawkins' mentioning this in his book. If anything it calls into question how we determine that something is the result of evolution (and therefore qualified as evidence), as opposed to coincidence or something else? From this example, it seems almost arbitrary.

His review of the fossil record is compelling but rehashes the same information presented in other books. And he doesn't explain how we know that the discovered fossils represent a history of the same clad, as opposed to distinct, unrelated organisms. This is particularly important since we are often comparing fossils from different time periods, from different geographical locations, and don't have access to the entire skeletal remains (let alone genetic information) of the organisms that we are claiming are descended from one another. For example, how do we know that we aren't merely pattern seeking when we look at Pakicetus, Ambulocetus, and Basilosaurus? Or Australopithecus and Homo? Moreover, he spends most of the chapter on human evolution explaining why paleontologists feud over the specific genus (or species) of particular fossils and why such arguments would be predicted under evolution precisely because they represent intermediates. But his explanation could've been condensed into 1 paragraph. It would've been far better if he spent the time to present more evidence among the mountains of evidence that are claimed to exist.

His chapter, "You did it yourself in nine months", was spent explaining by analogy that matter is capable of self assembly from the bottom-up, rather than a top-down approach as espoused by creationists. He presents his hypothesis that this is possible via "local rules" and uses the analogies of the starling and origami as examples, but this is not evidence. In fact, while analogy can clarify and improve understanding, it does not constitute evidence. Dawkins forgets that the "local rules" are functioning from a template coded in our genome. Thus, can we truly say that it is the "local rules" that create the appearance of design when a recipe is necessary for determining these "local rules"? He needs to show that the genome is capable of self assembly by local rules and that a complex organism can be created from this base. While he implies that possibility during his discussion of viruses, he does not provide much detail. Thus, the reader is left unconvinced and with more questions. Thus, if you get to this point, you will have read 50% of the book and realize that much of the book has been devoted to explanation, speculation, hypotheses, and very few presentation of actual evidence. He uses computer models to illustrate or make his points. But once again, while these models may help explain concepts, they do not constitute evidence.

The last few chapters of the book are better (beginning around page 285), but by this time he's likely to have lost most of his readers, that is, those who have not already accepted evolution prior to reading this book.

My final criticism is in regard to his reference section. Most good books concerning scientific topics contain plenty of references to primary articles. But there are very few primary articles listed in this book. In fact, you'll find more scientific literature referenced in a pop diet book than here. And I am not joking! Go to a bookstore and look at the "Notes" section of Dawkins' book yourself. He does include a bibliography, but most of the entries represent secondary or tertiary sources. This doesn't mean the information is inaccurate, but it would've been nice to have citations to primary sources for those wanting to do further research.

There are some experiments mentioned in the book (rather clever ones too), but given the fact that evolutionists are always touting the volumes of evidence (and not just from fossils) for the fact of evolution, I was disappointed to find that only a handful are mentioned in the book. As mentioned earlier, most of the book is either providing background information (about rudimentary chemistry or biology), providing explanation, or tearing down common creationist arguments or criticisms against evolution, rather than focusing on positive evidence favoring evolution. Moreover, Dawkins practically ignores the evidence from molecular biology and glosses over genetics.

In short, Dawkins writes his book as if he is talking to a fellow evolutionist (preaching to the choir). But such a person does not need convincing or evidence of evolution. You can merely point or mention the "obvious" and expect the person to understand. You don't need to go into detail or explain much. On the other hand, if you do not accept evolution or require convincing, then you will likely find that Dawkins assumes too much and does not provide sufficient data or detail as to why evolution is the best explanation for the observations under discussion.

Needless to say, I was disappointed with the book since it failed to live up to its subtitle - "The Evidence for Evolution". A more apt title would've been "The Plausbility of Evolution". He makes a good case for the reasonableness of evolution but does not provide much compelling evidence. If you are a creationist contemplating whether there is sufficient evidence for evolution, you will not be convinced by reading this book. Two far superior books (that provide better and more compelling evidence) can be found in "Why Evolution is True" and "Making of the Fittest". It isn't that Dawkins' book is bad; it provides sufficient information (on a high level) to be useful and entertaining, but don't expect it to arm you for a debate with a creationist or use it as a reference. And don't expect your creationist friend to read it and walk away a convert.

Great tutorial on evolution, however there are superior arguments, November 19, 2009
Given the plethora of evolution books published recently, I argue it's imperative to consider this book's worthiness against these other recent publications.

Richard Dawkins' objective with TGSOE is to present his ". . . personal summary of the evidence that the `theory' of evolution is actually a fact - as incontrovertible a fact as any in science." [1st pg. of the Preface]. This appears to make this book an argument for evolution, especially considering the subtitle, "The Evidence for Evolution". This framing also matches exactly to the explicit motivation expressed by evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne in his book, Why Evolution Is True.

Having read both I'd recommend Coyne's book if one is looking for an optimal argument on why Science considers evolution a fact and why there are no remaining hypotheses able to challenge evolution as an explanatory model for the evidence or discredit the findings supportive of evolution. It's much more concise, sticks more closely to peer-accepted findings, is more transparent about hedging on explanations where confidence is not yet overwhelming, and presents its findings in a manner easier to understand to someone not well educated in biology.

However, given that I think even the Coyne book falls short on its argument I also recommend molecular biologist Daniel Fairbanks' Relics of Eden: The Powerful Evidence of Evolution in Human DNA to provide additional evidence contained within all of life's DNA that evolution is both true and convincingly falsifies all prior arguments made by creationists and intelligent design creationists. Coyne makes an arguable assertion on why he didn't include a specific chapter on the evidence in our DNA though he weaves it into other chapters; I think that missing chapter is why Coyne's book is not a masterpiece. I'll post the link to his argument in the comments section of this review.

What I like about TGSOE and why I still recommend purchasing it is Dawkins' skill as a teacher. I quickly left by the wayside that this book was an argument and instead treated it as a tutorial. What I especially liked about Dawkins' book which makes for a poor argument but a great tutorial is his use of analogies and thinking exercises. Dawkins provides examples not merely because they provide devastating arguments for evolution, but instead because they are teachable moments. His reporting on the guppy and the Lenski experiments were as effective as any of Coyne's examples as arguments. However, Dawkins' distinguishes himself in providing examples that allow the stories and principles to resonate well after having read them. He asks questions, and guides us to how the evidence answers those questions. This makes for a lengthier book than Coyne's, but also helps reinforce the topical matter. The numerous photographs in the book also helped reinforce his examples and were an unexpected surprise.

An example of a powerful teaching moment was that Dawkins starts with how hominids acted as an agent to evolve wolves into an astonishingly broad collection of domestic dog breeds in the blink of evolutionary time. At first I thought this was too simplistic; I was wrong. Dawkins' builds on that reportage by then showing how plants and animals' dependent on those plants each act as agents causing the other to evolve. This eases the beginner (which I'm not though I'm also not an expert) into better appreciating how natural selection works. This initial primer on natural selection is not where it ends, instead Dawkins' excels at teaching natural selection from several aspects in a manner that optimizes retention of the principles discovered and the evidence falsifies other proposed mechanisms. Given the fact this makes for a bigger book than Coyne's, Dawkins' book is superior at taking on topics at a more advanced level. Dawkins begins at an even more elementary level than Coyne does, but then uses chapter after chapter to build upon what was learned in the previous chapter to flesh-out our understanding of evolutionary topics, particularly natural selection, how the variation in our DNA provides a map to our ancestral heritage, and how an intelligent designer is a ludicrous notion once we've understand all the evidence collected to date which not only validates evolution but frequently falsifies the idea of a designer - where the score is an uncountable number of observations for Science to zero for design advocates (which is a primary reason they don't publish in relevant peer-reviewed journals).

Where Dawkins' book suffers is related to his own personal musings. As a tutorial these musings are often but not always instructive. Science is significantly about what to research next given we certainly don't know everything. Dawkins' allows us a peek into where the research is heading. In fact, if you enjoy the chapter about evolutionary development, than I highly recommend adding to your knowledge in this area given it too provides overwhelming evidence for evolution while falsifying creationist/IDC notions, the classic is still biologist Sean B. Carroll's Endless Forms Most Beautiful: The New Science of Evo Devo. In addition, scientists as creative thinkers are often thought of as contradictory attributes when in fact it's a necessary element of framing your hypotheses or trying to create reasons to explain surprising data discoveries and then go off and attempt to validate these new notions. Science as a process actually yields more creativity than nearly all other thinking disciplines and Dawkins infers such in many of his musings.

One weakness I found is that Dawkins speculates in areas where the science is already being conducted, e.g., group selection, and the math regarding the number of planets where life could exist. So why waste pages speculating with zero data when he could have instead reported where the efforts were to date and extrapolated from there? In addition Mr. Dawkins can be a somewhat sloppy writer if this were treated like an argument rather than a teacher teaching; opening up opportunities for creationists to dishonestly quote-mine him where he is a preferred target of theirs, e.g., "the fact of our own existence is almost too surprising to bear" on pg. 425 and his other extraordinary reflections not shared by many of his peers.

Such rhetoric is sloppy because creationists often disingenuously attribute something one scientist states as personal opinion as that believed by all scientists. In a perfect world such intellectual dishonesty wouldn't occur and we wouldn't have to worry about how a great teacher's occasionally sloppy rhetoric is twisted to argue the opposite of what both the teacher and his discipline's adherents understand. So if you are a creationist looking to test your faith against what Science understands, the Coyne and Fairbanks' books are far sterner tests and provide less opportunities to avoid confronting the evidence that destroys that faith or at least requires modification if one is honest with oneself. If you want to actually learn and optimize the quality of the teaching where you forgive Dr. Dawkins occasionally lapsing into tangential topics, this book will resonate long after you've finished it and serve as a handy reference guide after your initial read.

I gave the book four rather than five stars primarily because I think he needs to use more research assistants to better footnote his book to more of the evidence he's reporting. While I've encountered nearly all his examples prior to my reading his book and know he's accurate in his reporting (with the exception of his possibly extending the findings in the Lenski experiment), books on controversial subjects should go over-board in citations. He also should have provided more examples from other scientists than his own musings, coupled to his musings not adding much, e.g., I found his zeal for computer programs extraneous to a book serving as a general review of the state of evolution. This adds up to the fact he needs a sterner editor. Given his success in selling prior books, it's not a surprise he was given so much latitude - to a fault I think.

If after the purchase of this book you remain excited about the topic and want to learn more, I recommend at least considering (I haven't read it yet but it's in my queue) getting Carl Zimmer's new book, The Tangled Bank: An Introduction to Evolution. Mr. Zimmer is one of our most trusted and respected science writers and is a brilliant communicator of evolution both in his prior books, periodical articles, and his blog. Tangled Bank is a text book focusing strictly on teaching evolution.

I THOUGHT I didn't need another book on evolution, but was WRONG!, November 30, 2009
About 20 years ago I started reading Stephen Jay Gould's essay collections. Then I discovered the work of Carl Zimmer and Neil Shubin and other evolutionary biologists. When this book came out I didn't intend to buy it as I have so many books on evolution and keep up with biology news. I went ahead and ordered it thinking that if there was nothing new in it I could always give it to a friend.

What a surprise! This book is a great overview of the subject - including very recent fossil discoveries in China as well as the standard subjects - radioactive dating, fossils, DNA evidence, etc. Somewhere along the way I had forgotten how the radioactive dating clock starts and Dawkins gives a very lucid explanation that will stay with me now. He also references other good books such as Shubin's "Your Inner Fish" and Coyne's "Why Evolution is True."

If you aren't teaching biology or natural history, this is a good refresher that will doubtless have some new info that you will find intriguing. If you don't know much about evolution and natural selection this book is the best one out there for an overview.

I'll be keeping this book.

"The Evidence for Evolution", December 21, 2009
I got interested in evolution because of my study of 19th century British intellectual history, which led me to Charles Darwin and the ramifications of his "Origin." Although my focus is the 19th century, I am always on the lookout for good books on evolutionary theory (and have reviewed several on Amazon), written for the non-scientist, and this is a very good and useful one. The author has engaged extensively in the "intelligent design" wars, but one thing I liked about this book is its more positive tone: what is the evidence for evolution? Not to say that Dawkins does not, from time to time, point out a fallacy in ID arguments, but that is not the primary goal of the book. In one 450 page treatment, the author covers about every conceivable point relating to evolution. Another bonus of the book is that Dawkins writes very well for the layman when discussing scientific terms, approaches, and studies. There was only one chapter (that dealing with how the human body develops from single cells) where I got a bit lost in his discussion.

Darwins develops his evidence for evolution in an interesting fashion. First he talks about what a scientific "theory" is, since this is a frequent point of contention with those who dispute evolution. Next, he focuses on dogs and cows, and other domestic animals, to argue that the multiplicity of canine breeds (all derived from the wolf) demonstrates how man has employed evolution--the so-called "artificial evolution." Natural evolution takes place without human intervention, in nature, and is not controlled by anyone or anything. An interesting chapter is devoted to methods of dating rocks and embedded fossils. Moreover, the author contends there are such things as "living fossils (e.g., guppies).

Dawkins rejects any suggestions that the fossil record is incomplete. In fact, he says we don't even need fossils to verify evolution; in any regard, more are being discoved all the time. Nor is there a human "missing" link, as he discusses the extensive human fossil record--quite a thorough but compact discussion with superb illustrations. The importance of tectonic plates and isolation is the subject of another chapter. Two later chapters I found particularly interesting: one on the vestiges of prior evolutionary stages left in animal and human bodies; the second on what Dawkins refers to as the "arms race"--how animals are in competition to survive and develop biologic weapons as part of the "survival of the fittest." The book includes extensive illustrations, including 32 pages of helpful full color illustrations: 6 pages of notes; and a 7-page bibliography (some of which sources are discussed in the text). An extremely helpful discussion of the topic by one of the best informed scientific students of evolution.

Another Excellent Explanation by Richard Dawkins, September 26, 2009

Many non-scientists, like me, have wondered, why do 99% of all scientists believe in evolution? Isn't it just a Theory? an opinion? How can the vote be so unanimous? 99% is a huge number.

I have been told that there is no evidence for evolution, it is a theory just made up by people who are angry at God and that it is stupid that people came from monkeys.

If you are like me and really want to understand the evidence for evolution honestly, and objectively, this is an excellent book.

Richard Dawkins's ability to lucidly explain complicated scientific information to anyone willing to take the time to listen and understand is impressive.

Once I started reading this book, I couldn't put it down.

Based on the mountain of evidence presented in this book, I now understand that the people telling me that evolution is stupid must be completely unaware of the evidence. I am thinking of giving this book as a Christmas gift for the members of my family that believe that there is no evidence for evolution.

Make this one of your top five to read this year., November 23, 2009
It is very sad that another book has to be written about such a subject, and yet I plan to read Jerry Coyne's book by the title "Why Evolution Is True," not just for the praise Dawkins gives it in this book, but because Coyne gets at least as much, if not more, praise for his effort on the same front. It is a tragedy that it is still difficult to convince people of the power of evolution by natural selection, but it is only so because so many people never bother to understand what is being propounded.

I know...I was once one of the fundamentalist Christians that rejected it. All I had to go on was the canned anti-intellectual responses of the religious right. I see many of my former compatriots giving one-star reviews to this book without even reading it, but that is the way it is with that group. I realize that most people that accept it do so without understanding it, as well. That was something I could not do, so I did read "On the Origin of Species" by Darwin, and many other books and articles on the subject since then. The real tragedy is that most people, accepting the science or not, never even care to try to understand the amazing way we developed into so many species out of likely only one.

Aside from having one of the most beautiful jackets I have ever seen, and some extraordinary color picture sections added for clarity, this book contains the following sections:

1. Only a theory?
2. Dogs, cows, and cabbages
3. The primrose path to macro-evolution
4. Silence and slow time
5. Before our very eyes
6. Missing link? What do you mean, 'missing'?
7. Missing persons? Missing no longer
8. You did it yourself in nine months
9. The ark of the continents
10. The tree of cousinship
11. History written all over us
12. Arms races and 'evolutionary theodicy'
13. There is grandeur in this view of life

Appendix: The history-deniers

The appendix could be read before or after the book, and is a general overview of polls that have been taken in the U.S. and Europe regarding the beliefs of the general population with regard to evolution and creationism. Needless to say, it is depressing, but what do you expect when you're talking about polls of the general population? As he points out, about 20% of the general population think the earth goes around the sun in a month, clearly having no idea what a year is. I'm sure a percentage would still think the earth was flat if the question was put forward.

I think most of the chapter headings speak for themselves. Chapter one discusses the nature of scientific theory, hypothesis, etc, because of the claim of so many that evolution is only a theory, forgetting all about little things such as gravitational theory, germ theory, etc. Chapter two and three slowly take us into the world of evolutionary change with examples we cannot deny. Chapter four discusses how we measure the age of the earth, strata, and fossils by means of geological clocks. Chapter five gives examples we can see in our lifetime, rather than just depending on the fossils of ages. Chapter six discusses the logical fallacy of missing links, while chapter seven goes specifically into transitional fossils within the human species. Chapter eight goes into the crucial subject of embryology, where most of the evolutionary changes to genes have the greatest effect. Chapter nine explains plate tectonics, formerly known as continental drift, and its importance to the spread of various early forms. Chapter ten discusses the common ancestry of all species, with many examples given of homologous structures. Chapter eleven covers the traces of historical evolutionary steps that can be seen in the modern forms that exist, such as vestigial organs. Chapter twelve talks about the pain and suffering inherent in the evolutionary view, and the problem that presents for many. Chapter thirteen goes deeply into Charles Darwin's famous quote at the end of "On the Origin of Species" and discusses it at length, breaking it up line by line.

Here is that quote, which is one of the most beautiful quotes concerning life:

"Thus, from the war of nature, from famine and death, the most exalted object which we are capable of conceiving, namely, the production of the higher animals, directly follows. There is grandeur in this view of life, with its several powers, having been originally breathed into a few forms or into one; and that, whilst this planet has gone cycling on according to the fixed law of gravity, from so simple a beginning endless forms most beautiful and most wonderful have been, and are being, evolved."

There is another quote I would like to put down in this review, from the book being reviewed.

"Information on how to handle the present so as to survive into the future is necessarily gleaned from the past." -- Richard Dawkins, The Greatest Show on Earth, 2009, pg 406.

I think this book should have been more carefully argued, and in much more detail, which is why I still think "On the Origin of Species," first edition, is one of the best books one can read, since Darwin was such a careful and precise thinker -- but for a modern perspective, one cannot do much better than combining Darwin's work with Dawkins' work.

Dawkins does it again, September 22, 2009
Evolution is an inescapable fact, and we should celebrate its astonishing power, simplicity and beauty, as Richard Dawkins notes in this marvelously titled book, the latest addition to his already impressive list of books on evolution.

Do we really need yet another "evidence for evolution" book? Well, yes we do. If only because of the alarmingly large number of educated people (especially in the United States) who hold virulent anti-evolution sentiments and prefer a supernatural, "intelligent design" explanation for the key questions in biology. But will the "history-deniers" read Dawkins? Leaving creationists and ID proponents aside, many people misunderstand evolution as a long chain of events that shape simple forms into more complex ones, rather than the branching and extinction of lineages. Therefore, open-minded readers should welcome yet another popular book on evolutionary biology, particularly if it has such a breadth and is so very well written as Dawkins'. As a teacher and communicator of science, Dawkins remains unsurpassed.

The "Greatest Show on Earth" is an ambitiously large survey of evolutionary biology; more than 400 pages (plus many color photos) one long argument for why evolution is a firmly-based scientific explanation, a fact. Even for those who accept the evidence for evolution, Dawkins' book is a stimulating and refreshing read; not least because of its conversational yet authorative tone (although Dawkins can't help but to lash out at religion here and there, it certainly is not an anti-religion book like "The God Delusion"). As one reviewer noted: if Charles Darwin would want to know how his theory had fared in the 21th century, this is the book he should read. My own first recommendation, however, would be Jerry Coyne's Why Evolution Is True. The latter book is equally well written and informative, but more concise and focused. What's more, Coyne is less polemical than Dawkins (BTW, Dawkins praises Coyne's book in his first chapter).

Dawkins covers the science in a rather standard fashion. The Gal�pagos islands, transitional fossils, embryology, artificial breeding, anatomy, etc., it's all there. Which is fine, of course. But those who are looking for a primer on the latest insights into evolutionary biology won't find it here. I would have liked to see more emphasis on the awesome power of molecular genetics in demonstrating evolution as an established fact. After all, the evidence in molecular biology is even more compelling than the fossil record (but, admittedly, more difficult to explain to lay persons). As an accompanying book, I would therefore recommend Sean Carroll's The Making of the Fittest: DNA and the Ultimate Forensic Record of Evolution, which focuses on how DNA directs the evolutionary process.

I'm puzzled why Dawkins chose not to mention the new insights into the molecular evolution of the eye. He discussed eye evolution at length in "The Blind Watchmaker" - as did Darwin in "The Origin of Species" - and it remains a favorite topic of the ID crowd. But astounding genetic findings have revolutionized the eye evolution field: the animal eye, from fruitfly to man, was "invented" only once during evolution. Darwin would have been thrilled! Dawkins could have scored a strong point here. A missed opportunity.

That being said, one can only hope that this book will convert at least some creationists and ID advocates; that the scales will fall from their religious eyes. But I have my doubts. To quote biologist Tom Tregenza: The fact that Darwin's theory makes so many predictions, none of which has ever been falsified, makes it easy to make a further prediction: it is only a matter of time before the ID proponents make it a fundamental tenet of their ideology that the pattern of life has been made that way specifically to fool biologists. In which case, evolutionists can take comfort in knowing that the creator specifically had THEM in mind at every step of the process.

More essential reading for people sceptical about evolution, December 20, 2009
There were already 100 5-star reviews posted when I started writing this, and there seems little point in repeating the many valuable points they make. The most obvious comparison is with Jerry Coyne's book on the same theme, Why Evolution is True, which was published earlier in the year. Both books are excellent, and both need to be read by anyone interested in the subject. The ideal thing would be for them to be carefully read by people who doubt the reality of evolution but are genuinely interested in knowing the truth, if any such people exist. Rather to my surprise, I like Jerry Coyne's book the better of the two, primarily because he sticks more to the topic and doesn't wander off into side issues so readily as Dawkins. Still, read both!

There are two points that both books make that are worth repeating even though others have already done so: the story of Tiktaalik (which I knew about already) and Richard Lenski's experiments breeding bacteria (which I didn't). Tiktaalik is important as an example of how evolutionary theory tells you where to look to find something no one has ever found before, but which ought to exist. Lenski's experiments are important as an illustration of how fast divergent evolution can proceed, even with cultures that are initially identical and are treated identically.

Now I shall follow the same plan as I did with Coyne's book, looking through the 1- and 2-star reviews to see if they say anything worth discussing. Again, unfortunately, the answer is no, and anyone who thought the negative reviews of Coyne were inane should take a look at these. They only good thing about them is that they stimulated some very good comments, so if you read these reviews read the comments as well.

One thing that appears to have particularly upset some of them is the idea that the evidence for evolution is at least as strong as the evidence for the Holocaust, as they seem to think that this makes Dawkins a Holocaust-denier. Others seem to think they are reviewing The God Delusion, as they attack a position that is barely present at all in The Greatest Show on Earth: "This man claiming there is no God is crazy to me. First of all in order to come to a conclusion like that you would have to search out the universe". When challenged as to whether she had actually read the book, the reviewer admitted that her "review" was a review of the title: "I read the title of the book. I would give it a 0 stars but there is none. I never said I read the whole book anyways Christians are not perfect." I'm not sure what she found atheistic about the title. Probably someone told her about The God Delusion (which she probably didn't read either) and she got the two books confused. There are, of course, authors who always write the same book (Dan Brown springs to mind), but Richard Dawkins is not one of them.

In fairness to her, she wasn't the only one to think the book was an atheist tract. We also have "His primary objective is to disprove the existence of God", "There is a special place reserved in Hell for Richard Dawkins. He does more to harm to obvious God created world than anyone since Darwin," as well as others who quite explicitly say "First, let me say I haven't read this book BUT ", or who think they are reviewing Amazon's efficiency for delivering books "I didn't receive the book until today, december 12, 2009, at 09:47 A.M. I have been waiting."

I also looked through the 5-star reviews to see if I can find any evidence that Dawkins had reached his target audience, the sort of readers who don't believe in evolution but are willing to examine the evidence in an honest way. Unfortunately there is little suggestion of that. Apart from one strange review posted a week ago that seems to be intended as a parody, all of them were written by people who already accepted the reality that Dawkins was trying to demonstrate. ... Read more

Editorial Review

From one of the most significant neuroscientists at work today, a pathbreaking investigation of a question that has confounded philosophers, psychologists, and neuroscientists for centuries: how is consciousness created?
 
Antonio Damasio has spent the past thirty years studying and writing about how the brain operates, and his work has garnered acclaim for its singular melding of the scientific and the humanistic. In Self Comes to Mind, he goes against the long-standing idea that consciousness is somehow separate from the body, presenting compelling new scientific evidence that consciousness—what we think of as a mind with a self—is to begin with a biological process created by a living organism. Besides the three traditional perspectives used to study the mind (the introspective, the behavioral, and the neurological), Damasio introduces an evolutionary perspective that entails a radical change in the way the history of conscious minds is viewed and told. He also advances a radical hypothesis regarding the origins and varieties of feelings, which is central to his framework for the biological construction of consciousness: feelings are grounded in a near fusion of body and brain networks, and first emerge from the historically old and humble brain stem rather than from the modern cerebral cortex.
 
Damasio suggests that the brain’s development of a human self becomes a challenge to nature’s indifference and opens the way for the appearance of culture, a radical break in the course of evolution and the source of a new level of life regulation—sociocultural homeostasis. He leaves no doubt that the blueprint for the work-in-progress he calls sociocultural homeostasis is the genetically well-established basic homeostasis, the curator of value that has been present in simple life-forms for billions of years. Self Comes to Mind is a groundbreaking journey into the neurobiological foundations of mind and self.

Reviews

Good news and bad news, November 19, 2010
The deep enigma of consciousness has been explored from many directions, including contributions by neuroscientists, psychologists, philosophers and a few physicists (both quantum and complex systems scientists). An important study area consists of injuries or diseases that destroy specific brain structures; these clinical events are often closely correlated to nuanced effects on selective aspects of consciousness. Professor Damasio's book makes good use of these data to describe many known neural correlates of consciousness. For purposes of this book, he adopts the working hypothesis that mental states and brain states are essentially equivalent. While many (including this reviewer) find this idea questionable, such tentative hypothesis is quite appropriate for a book of this kind. In science we often adopt useful, if highly oversimplified, models in the early stages of our studies with no illusions that they are perfectly accurate. In this manner "Truth" is (hopefully) approached in a series of successive approximations. Thankfully, Damasio does not claim to "explain" consciousness.

The book's title is based on Damasio's suggestion that our evolutionary history reveals many simple creatures with active "minds" (defined broadly), but only much later did self (awareness) develop; in other words the human self is built in steps grounded in the so-called "protoself." An essential step is the development of homeostatis (life regulation needed to survive) in single cell creatures like bacteria, followed by progressively more complex "societies of cells" in more complex creatures like insects, reptiles, and mammals. Thus consciousness, rooted in our evolutionary past, helps to optimize our responses to the environment so that we may continue our existence. Damasio also describes the self in terms of stages: the protoself, core self and autobiographical self, along with specific brain structures that may support these distinct stages. He concludes that conscious minds emerge from the brain's nested hierarchy of neural networks operating at multiple spatial scales (levels); I will expand on this last point later.

Several chapters consider brain structures that are most essential to mind and consciousness, providing more status to the brain stem and its sub structures than is normally acknowledged by neuroscientists. Damasio's arguments here are based on observations of children born without a cerebral cortex and on several evolutionary considerations. The book cites quite a bit of detailed brain anatomy so non experts should probably read the excellent Appendix on brain structure before tackling any material beyond chapter 2. Normally this suggestion would be offered in a Preface, but this book has none.

I gave the book four stars based on my evaluation of both the good and not so good features: 1) the nice development of a number of important ideas on conscious correlates, 2) the fluff, e.g., some unnecessary technical jargon and the belaboring of obvious points, 3) important omissions. In an example of the latter, I found the memory chapter inadequate given its central role in consciousness. I would have liked to read more about how, where, and at what spatial scales are various kinds of memory stored, or at least given some sense of which parts of the memory puzzle have actually been solved. By loose analogy, if I ask how a TV works, I am unsatisfied by explanations of how to dial in specific channels. Rather, I want to hear about electromagnetic fields and electron guns.

Many readers avoid Endnotes; this may be a mistake. Here is one shining gem involving an interchange between Damasio and Francis Crick, who pointed to several provocative definitions in the International Dictionary of Psychology (1996), providing both these guys quite a laugh. I will not spoil the story by relating the dictionary's definition of "consciousness," but here is this dictionary's definition of "love," "A form of mental illness not yet recognized by any of the standard diagnostic manuals." (Note to my wife, I do not endorse this definition.)

The apparent critical importance of the brain's nested hierarchy to consciousness seemed to me to be substantially understated in Damisio's book. I say this because nested hierarchy is a hallmark of many if not most complex systems, and brains are considered by most to be the pre-eminent complex systems. Think of social systems, for example. They typically consist of persons, neighborhoods, cities, states and nations; their observed dynamic behaviors are fractal-like (scale dependent) and the essence of their behaviors is rooted in the nested hierarchy of interactions at multiple scales, both top-down and bottom-up, the so-called "circular causality" of Synergetics, the science of cooperation and self organization (see books by Hermann Haken). The brain's nested hierarchy and its apparent critical importance to consciousness are discussed in Todd Feinberg's From Axons to Identity Neurological Explorations of the Nature of the Self [HC,2009] and my new book Brain, Mind, and the Structure of Reality, 2010, which also explores the possible fundamental role of information in both the physical and mental realms. This latter topic is also covered in a series of essays edited by Paul Davies and Neils Gregersen Information and the Nature of Reality: From Physics to Metaphysics, 2010.

Piecing It All Together., November 22, 2010
Dr. Damasio says that, "This book is dedicated to addressing two questions. First: how does the brain construct a mind? Second: how does the brain make that mind conscious?" Do I think he does an exceptional job of tackling these two questions? Yes, I do.

I believe the greatest strength of this book lies in Dr. Damasio's capacity to take account of vast amounts of information and viewpoints related to mind and consciousness. He has included large swaths of issues that are usually books in and of themselves (Body Maps - The Body Has a Mind of Its Own: How Body Maps in Your Brain Help You Do (Almost) Everything Better, Extended/Embodied Cognition - The Extended Mind (Life and Mind: Philosophical Issues in Biology and Psychology), Efficient Computational Theory of Mind - Your Brain Is (Almost) Perfect: How We Make Decisions, Selfhood - The Ego Tunnel: The Science of the Mind and the Myth of the Self, Free Will - Distributed Cognition and the Will: Individual Volition and Social Context (Bradford Books), Neuroeconomics - Rationality for Mortals: How People Cope with Uncertainty (Evolution and Cognition Series) and Neuroanatomy - Mapping the Mind: Revised and Updated Edition). Furthermore, Dr. Damasio is very forthcoming in demarcating the known from the unknown and the probable from the possible in regards to neuroscience. The only downside I experienced while reading this book is that I felt a little lost, or perhaps impatient, while waiting for Damasio to tie everything together. It was only towards the last half of the book that the big picture began to emerge.

That being said, I believe that this book is a significant advancement in neuroscientific research. Most importantly, I actually understand what Damasio means when he speaks of the proto self, core self, and autobiographical self. His explanation of Convergence-Divergence Zones (CDZ's), as well as anatomical structures, is very effective and his manner of description is so unsophisticated that even a layman like me can understand exactly what he is illustrating. Also, there are many pictures, diagrams, and charts to help too.

In conclusion, I very much enjoyed the substance of this book (the style is somewhat lacking, but hey, it's not supposed to be Shakespeare!). I also took pleasure in the way in which Damasio took a back-handed approach to dismissing a certain philosophers (Daniel Dennett, ahem) approach towards consciousness; I liked it because when it comes to Mind/Brain/Consciousness issues, I think philosophers must necessarily take a supporting role to the neuroscientists. "I see the neurology of consciousness as organized around the brain structures involved in generating the lead triad of wakefulness, mind, and self. Three major anatomical divisions - the brain stem, the thalamus, and cerebral cortex - are principally involved, but one must caution that there are no direct alignments between each anatomical division and each component of the triad. All three divisions contribute to some aspect of wakefulness, mind, and self." A great book, I highly recommend it.

For bumblebee scholars, too., November 25, 2010
As I write this I am trying to assess the three previous reviews which were written by those more scholarly than I. That said, I encourage "bumblebee scholars" such as I to dig in to this seminal work. It can't hurt and might be good for you.

Cautionary Note: If you read the Endnotes you may construct a reading list that will prompt you to delay your demise for at least twenty years beyond your current biological expectancy.

Puts William James on a Modern Foundation of Neuroscience, November 21, 2010
"Self Comes to Mind - Constructing the Conscious Brain" is Antonio Domasio's latest landmark book on the nature of consciousness and how it is created. In his previous book "The Feeling of Knowing" Damasio provided an account that was logically consistent with third party perspectives of philosophy, psychology, plus the latest findings in neuroscience.

In the "Self Comes to Mind" he announces his intention to "start over" with explanations, and he stakes out new ground with a daring first person subjective perspective that is akin to William James view of "my" objects of attention versus "I" as the self or protagonist who is the active agent in the changing stream of consciousness, and "owns" the other objects as "knower". He successfully brings off this new venture of understanding.

He names the two questions to be addressed: how does the brain construct a mind? and how does the brain make that mind conscious? He affirms James' idea of the importance of a self, and brings it alive with his own earlier ideas of the three aspects of self (the proto self, the core self, and the autobiographical self) but develops them more fully in the "Self Comes to Mind" with the active protagonist in mind.

The shift to Damasio's first person subjective protagonist perspective from his prior third person objective prospective takes place when he makes the distinction between neural maps constructed by the brain for information, and images formed in the mind (conscious or unconscious) for use by the protagonist in navigating their external environment to achieve goals having biological and cultural value.

He acknowledges in the Appendix that the mind-brain equivalence hypothesis is not universally liked or accepted. I believe the Domasio's mind-brain hypothesis is logically correct for two main reasons. First, the equivalence of subjective mental images and objective brain neural maps is quite convincing - after all, people can communicate their mental images with one another by talking and listening while paying close attention to each other. A "sentence" can be spoken, listened to, and repeated back to the speaker to confirm error free communication, high fidelity, and understanding of the intended meaning. A third witness can verify the accuracy of the information exchanged. Second, Domasio avoids the common philosophical error of dualism which is so easy to make when moving from the outside objective view to the inside subjective view of the human brain and its mind. Mortimer Adler, renown American philosopher, reminds us that there are three object types (real, subjective, and intentional), and all three must be included when discussing the conscious mind. Intentionality was lost as a philosophical concept since Kant obliterated it. This is OK for mindless rocks, but not for human beings with meaningful language. Domasio puts the Protagonist process back in the Jamesian stream of consciousness with attention and intention. The stream of consciousness runs on a layered foundation of proto self, core self, and extended or autobiographical self.

Part IV is a nice wrap up for the non-specialist public with an deep interest in neurology, psychology, and philosophy of mind. Domasio takes care to not use suit case words that mean different things to different people, and in the process introduces delightful new words that are more general and less controversial.

He introduces the term Genomic Unconscious (page 278) to provide for the biological diversity of dispositions (another new term) to better convey psychological concepts (instinct, automatic behaviors, drives, and motivations) from a neurological foundation. Domasio acknowledges that the Genomic Unconscious has something to do with what Freud and Jung sensed, but avoids getting bogged down on Freud's emphasis on sexuality that caused Jung to break company from him. Jung went on to develop concepts of consciousness (personal consciousness, personal unconsciousness, and the collective unconscious or archetypal realm) and enduring patterns that arise in civilization as it ascends to the pinacle of consciousness. Yes, Genomic Unconscious covers this!

Damasio includes feeling and value as fundamental observables of the self and its objects. He briefly uses the "intuition" word without reservation (page 276). Jung included intuition in his functional classification of sensation, intuition, thinking, and feeling. Jung identified four ways of perceiving and judging both the external and the internal objects in the field of consciousness. The subjective sensation function monitors subjective feelings, and the subjective rational valuing function makes judgments as to whether a privately held object of attention is good or bad, OK, or not OK.

On the last two page of the last Chapter, Damasio acknowledges imagination's ability to navigate the future as the ultimate gift of consciousness, and this depends on the intersection of self with memory, tempered by personal feeling, with consideration of the well-being of members of society. Damasio handles mapping vs simulating body states on pages 101-107, and touches on the recent discovery of mirror neuron's ability to simulate body state feeling of another creature (monkeys were the subject) in the observing self's brain-mind. He suggests that being able to simulate or imagine the other "object" would not be possible if the neurological network were not first in place to simulate and imagine one's own "self" in an "as-if" future. It is important that imagination is included in Damasio's new neurologically based model of the intentional attentive protagonist self-in-mind.

James devoted entire Chapters in his two books to imagination and attention. Jung, coming from an empirical study of the mental categories of objective and subjective knowledge, came up with the sensation, intuition, thinking, and feeling categories of information that can be held in the conscious mind and witnessed by the small momentary "self", against a longer term unconscious background of the larger "Self". Jung included imagination as an actual perceptual content of the intuition function, but not as a separate intentional function. However, Jung included a fifth transcendent function that comes into play for reconciling opposing tendencies of the functional information about objects. This transcendent function works with symbolic images that may be developed and brought forth in a process described by Jung as active imagination. Jung also identified the two directions of attention and interest known as the extraverted and introverted attitudes of consciousness. Jung's terms extraversion and introversion are widely used today. They are included as options of attentional choice in the MBTI�(Myers Briggs Type Indicator), and as one of the five factors in the Five Factor Model of Personality. Geldart included attention and imagination as functions of intentionality, plus Jung's four functions of perception and judgment for both subjective and objective objects of attention in the EPIC model (Emergent Patterns of Individual Consciousness).

Damasio implicitly puts William James psychological and pragmatic concepts of self, attention, imagination, ideomotor force and steam of consciousness on a modern neurological foundation. I think it is time for Carl Jung's knowledge categories of consciousness (very suitable for the autobiographical self) to be considered for its pragmatic value by scientists of consciousness today. Why so? Jung spoke of the four functions (knowledge aspects) of consciousness (S, N, T, and F) or sensation, intuition, thinking, and feeling. Jung described them in his Psychological Types in 1921. Beebe thinks of them as types of consciousness, not types of people [Beebe, J. (2004). Understanding Consciousness through the theory of psychological types, Cambray and Carter (eds.) Analytic Psychology: Contemporary Perspectives in Jungian Analysis]. Brunner-Routledge. Geldart included imagination and intention as functions of intention, along with Jung's four extraverted functions for real external objects and four introverted functions for subjective internal objects of consciousness in the EPIC model (2010).

Damasio has something to say on page 14 about attempts by others to relate a view of the mind as a nonphysical phenomenon with laws of quantum physics. He appeals to relying more on an unfolding understanding from neuroscience instead of possibilities from a more remote and less accessible quantum physics. He prefers not to explain the mystery of conscious mind with another mystery of quantum physics, and refers to several authors leaning on a quantum physics explanation. He does not refer to the work by Schwartz, J. and Begley, S. (2002). The Mind and its Brain: Neuroplasticity and the Power of Mental Force. Schwartz working with Henry Stapp found that the effect of attention can be modeled in Schrodinger's wave equations that are normally applied to physical matter at the sub-atomic level. They assume that attention can change the odds on which wave function wins and hence which thought wins (page 362, Figure 8 of their book). Obviously, this does not explain how consciousness emerges in mind with associated mental images, nor is this what they intend to do. But it is a creative effort to show that selective attention of the subject-agent (as James described it) is not something metaphysical, but something permitted in the laws of physics. This hardly needs to be proved because Schwartz's book provides ample evidence that learning new habits and unlearning obsessive compulsive habits can be accomplished by harnessing the self's power of attention to achieve actual free will or free won't choices in the transient moments of decision prior to a voluntary response. What makes this challenging is that Domasio's "core self" is a transient phenomenon that provides the only window of opportunity to make a new free will or free won't response in the real world where things are matter and do matter.

I went back to William James to study his understanding of attention as a macroscopic (not quantum physics) phenomenon on the conscious mind side of the mind-brain system. A closer reading of James found that he discovered (without naming it) a psychological quantum of action and intentionality on the scale of fractions of a second to a few seconds. James' indivisible ideomotor action released in body by the self as agent, and James' indivisible privately voiced mental statements about mental images (the pack of cards is on the table) are pragmatic evidence of a psychological quantum of action effect. This predates quantum effects in physics.

Antonio Domasio's new book "Self Comes to Mind:Constructing the Conscious Brain" is delightful, well worth waiting for, and well worth reading over and over. It's bound to become a classic.

Walter Geldart developed a logical model that integrates William James' intentional functions of attention and imagination with Carl Jung's perception (sensation and intuition) and judgment (thinking and feeling) functions of consciousness. The information is held briefly in working memory. The mathematical model predicts emergent patterns that are analogous to information patterns owned by a "core self" (Domasio). The predicted patterns can be interpreted with definitions from philosophy,psychology, and neurology. The EPIC model is inclusive. It omits no necessary categories of object types (all three real, subjective, and intentional object type categories of philosophy are present). Then it maps ten necessary and sufficient psychological functions from Jung and James to the correct object type categories and to their own position in ten intervals in the momentary indivisible event cycle of consciousness (the Jamesian quantum of psychological activity). It then becomes possible to predict emergent strings of functional content of consciousness using the mathematics of prime number division of the integral duration of the event cycle.


The Epic Roles of Consciousness: Emergent Patterns of Individual Consciousness - Paperback (Jan. 15, 2010) by Walter J. Geldart

Resolving the "Mind-body" Problem through Mental Cartography, December 20, 2010
Professor Damasio begins this incredible story using Darwin's Theory of Evolution as the driving force and centerpiece of a theoretical odyssey that is as intimate as it is cogent and thorough. For the author, the theory of how the mind becomes "self" is a labor of love, surely his professional life quest: the last remaining riddle of the universe, now finally solved by the life work of this author. It is told so carefully, so cogently, and with such clarity and depth that it amounts to a convincing love story that will simply take the breath away.

This book is sure to be one of the finalists in the National Science Book of the year Award. It certainly gets my vote!

At the center of this incredible story (and the author's theory) is the ever-evolving cell: that powerful "active" (but much underrated) building block of all living systems. With the evolution of the cell, which importantly, has, since its inception, always had the capacity to be a "stand-along," "purposefully surviving" functional living system and unit of life. That is to say as a "proto-animal," the cell brings intrinsically into being the functional aspects of an "intentional life." The mind is simply one of the latest evolutionary adaptations of this exquisite carefully balanced, living piece of architecture called (animal) life. One of the key remaining unanswered properties of a cell is that it comes with the "will to survive," built-in? How it does this?-- the author does not touch with a ten-foot pole; and this remains the only flaw in the design, as the research leaves unanswered, and thus begs this most important of questions. But more about that later.

As Professor Damasio demonstrates so elegantly, having a "proto-animal" as the functional building block of life is no small matter. But in fact is a very large matter indeed. It is qualitatively different than say that of having a dead (and thus passive) object (such as an inactive or dead cell or a brick) as the building block of a system. For as the cell has evolved, it's inherent (and unexplained) but powerful and purposeful "will to survive" has also evolved to promote much more specialized and infinitely more complex survival requirements, components and imperatives.

This increased specialization and complexity combined with the unexplained need for a cell to survive, alone appear to be the key elements explaining human motivation, the economics of value, "intention," "anticipation," the ability to predict, the need to reason and plan, as well as "will" itself. Arguably, it is these unexplained aspects of the cell that drive the machinery of life, self and the life of the mind. With it, the cell (as well as the body as organism), is motivated to adapt in order to live, and as a result of this built in imperative, it has "learned" over eons how to coalesce and combine with other cells to form "colonies," which over those years have also evolved into specialized sub-components (such as organs of the body, etc.) and ultimately into organisms and other larger living eco-systems themselves -- all engineered and controlled by the DNA of the genes (or their equivalents, mimes of culture).

It is the members of these specialized groups of cells, the neuron in particular, that is the protagonist and hero of this story: One that in my view finally gets the mystery of consciousness out into the open, and the story about consciousness, the self, emotions and feelings, right. The neuron is not just a cell, but the "micro system" at the cellular level that through its signaling, mapping, imaging and messenger roles, is pretty much responsible for sculpting, and controlling the activity of the larger macro system called the body (or organism).

Nothing in science is quite so dense, so elegant, so surprising, so cogent, or so beautiful as the author's carefully honed and incremental descriptions, that build into a crescendo, of how the neuron through evolution has resolved the long-standing and formidable "mind-body" problem. That problem is dispatched as a matter of course, and so easily and with such elegance that it reduces simply to a side issue dealing with the question of the need for the body to maintain less than a dozen or so parameters within very narrow homeostatic ranges.

In it role as the conductor of a symphony of a multilayered orchestra of cells, it is the neuron's job as the CEO of that operation to maintain the body in the necessary homeostatic condition. However, "body maintenance" is a job that predated even the brain and exists even in animals without a conscious mind. These "proto-mental" capacities were important antecedents to the mentality that eventually encompassed what we have come to know as "conscious mentality." Therefore the older brainstem, which still "maintains" the body through passive processes and processing, is strongly implicated and shown to necessarily have been a precursor to the more complex later set of brain operations that we have come to recognize as the "self" and as consciousness.

The neuron conducts the body's orchestra of both "normal body maintenance" as well as its self-reflective activities, which actually create the "self." The neuron does this by being a serious multi-tasker; one scripted to provide the charts for the music of the body: its feelings and emotions (which just happen to bring them into being). The sheet music comes in the form of interactive maps, images and bi-directional messages of the cell's and the organism's activities, all brought together as a symphony of managed anticipation, forward feedback and pre-processing, predictions, storage, retrievals and editing from memory, and the channeling of interests and attention -- all in defense of maintaining homeostasis -- that is to say in defense of the body's (or the system's or organism's) global survival interests. The summation of this mostly cartographic activity, called up as perceptions, maps and images, from either inside or outside the brain, is what constitutes the brain's response to the imperatives of life. We sense this constant teeming brain activity as conscious feelings and emotions that we can uniquely attach to the self. QED.

All of this exquisite complexity is resolved beautifully in the Occam's Razor sense. To wit: No other theory, so far, explains what the brain or the mind does quite as economically as does Professor Damasio's. No other theory explains how the "self" comes into being quite so cogently as Professor Damasio's. No other theory explains how evolution plays such a critical role in the development of this orchestra as does that of Professor Damasio's. And all of this knowledge is gained by him the hard way: through careful observation of diseased brains, of split-brain research, through the author's on over-sized introspective brain, and by the pulling together of the research of nearly every fruitful avenue in neurology over the last century. To say that this book is a tour de force would be an understatement.

Because Professor Damasio's theory does not even attempt to explain where the cell's "will to survive" comes from, it leaves the back door open for the "Intelligent Designers" to pounce on. I predict that it will be just a matter of time before they seize on this single isolated fact as an opportunity to say that: it is a god that implants this will to live into the cell? Surely, they will do this, but when they do, it will be a poison pill as surely they can then will be able to see that they have walked into a trap of their own making: as they then will have no choice but to accept Darwin's theory of evolution as god's own handiwork. If they want to do that, then fine. It simply makes god superfluous, as we already knew he always was. Fifty stars.

A few thoughts, December 18, 2010
I'm in no way a neuroscientist or someone with deep psichology or neurology knowledges. I'm just an interested layman that finds the subject at hand fascinating. I'm also perfectly aware from the fields that I study that there are frequently several contesting theories, and rarely there's consense over all the minutiae.

I must commend the other reviewers for the excellent commentaries on this work. I will not be so thourough and analytical.

This book might take some time to read and absorb the contents, specially if you lack bases of anatomy and neurology (like me), altough professor Damasio tries to simplify matters with many metaphors and practical examples. Many aspects are covered in this work, including the construction of maps through our "objectives"; how memory works and how do we reconstruct things from memory (although sometimes lacking details) through the Convergence Divergence Zones; the importance of homeostasis and mechanisms of reward-punishment; the construction of conscience and the importance of the Cerebral Cortex, but also of the Thalamus and the brain stem! Not forgetting the effects and relation between culture, society and biology of the brain among many other fascinating subjects (like the Qualia).

Naturally we are only scratching the surface on how our brain works and what makes the self, but with the work of Professor Damasio and several other top neuroscientists slowly we will take conscience on how conscience works. ... Read more

Editorial Review

An astonishing new science called neuroplasticity is overthrowing the centuries- old notion that the human brain is immutable. In this revolutionary look at the brain, psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Norman Doidge, M.D., provides an introduction to both the brilliant scientists championing neuroplasticity and the people whose lives they've transformed. From stroke patients learning to speak again to the remarkable case of a woman born with half a brain that rewired itself to work as a whole, The Brain That Changes Itself will permanently alter the way we look at our brains, human nature, and human potential. ... Read more

Reviews

The Leopard Can Change His Spots, March 25, 2007
Neuroplasticity has recently become a bit of a buzzword. Long the preserve of neuroscientists, this is one of a number of new books on the topic written for the public.

I recently reviewed Sharon Begley's superb book - Train Your Mind, Change Your Brain - and this one is in a similar vein. Though it is rather different from Sharon's book in which the main focus was on the changes wrought in the brains of meditators, while this one looks at the extraordinary responses of the brain to injury or congenital absence of sensory organs. Since this book went to press, yet another study, this time from India, has shown that some blind children may be able to regain their sight, an observation that is helping turn a lot of neurology on its head.

Neuroplasticity is a topic of enormous practical importance. The increasing evidence that the brain is a highly adaptable structure that undergoes constant change throughout life is a far cry from the idea that we are simply the product of our genes or our environment. Our genes help determine how we can respond to the environment; they do not make us who we are. And we all have untapped potential. This is more than the old nature/nurture debate in a new bottle. It has implications for human potential: how much can you develop your own brain and mind? Can you really teach a child to be a kind, loving person who can dramatically exceed his or her potential? Can psychotherapy really help change your brain for the better? Can we help re-wire the brain of a psychopath? Do we have the right to try?

The author is both a research psychiatrist and a psychoanalyst who has interviewed many experts in the field. His book is full of well chosen and detailed stories about scientists and their discoveries as well as case reports of triumph over unbelievable adversity. There is also a good discussion of people who have remarkable abilities despite the absence of key regions of the brain.

This book is a good complement to Sharon Begley's and if you can afford it, then I strongly recommend that you get both books. If your interest is more in personal development and its effects on the brain, then Sharon's book will be the one for you. If you are more interested in the science and anecdotes about scientists and some amazing patients, then this book may be the one to go for.

Highly recommended.


Richard G. Petty, MD, author of Healing, Meaning and Purpose: The Magical Power of the Emerging Laws of Life

Excellent balance of case history, theory, and empirical research, July 11, 2007
This is one of the most interesting nonfiction books that I have *ever* read. I found the book fascinating, but lest that be chalked up to my being a psychologist, my husband the computer scientist found it fascinating, too.

Scientists used to believe that the brain was relatively fixed and unchanging -- some of them still believe that -- but recent research shows that the brain is much more mutable than biologists, psychologists, physicians (and any other scientists who studied brains) had ever thought.

For example, anecdotal evidence had long supported the idea that blind people hear better than sighted people, but scientists pooh-poohed this idea, saying that there was no mechanism for that to occur. Well, they recently discovered that the area of the brain usually called the visual cortex is taken over for auditory processing in blind people. So blind folks have twice as much brain space devoted to processing sounds, which means that they really do hear better, and now we know why. Scientists were astounded to discover that the "visual" cortex was really just brain space that could be used for anything.

Psych 101 and Bio 101 textbooks often have a picture in them that shows which areas of the brain control which bodily functions, and this is all presented as fixed and unchanging. Imagine our surprise to learn that the brain can make fairly large shifts in just a few days -- for example, if you blindfold somebody for five days, the area of their brains that's usually called the visual cortex starts using large sections of itself to process touch and sound, and this change is made in as little as two days. Two days!

The book is not just theoretical, though -- the author is interested in the theory, but he's even more interested in how all of this can be applied to better the lives of real people. He talks about people with strokes who've learned to walk again, people with vestibular problems who've learned to substitute something else for their missing vestibular system, people who've been helped with ADHD, autism, retardation, and many other "incurable" conditions by altering their brains.

The downside of the book is that the author is a Freudian, so there are some annoying comments about how Freud knew it all along, but if you can overlook that, it's all fascinating. The author does an excellent job of drawing the reader in with a story about a real person, then elaborating on the ideas by talking about studies that show the basic principles and their implications, then explaining how this can be used to ameliorate or even cure conditions that were considered incurable.

This book blew me away!

The chapter titles will give you more information about the subject matter:

1. A Woman Perpetually Falling...: Rescued by the Man Who Discovered the Plasticity of Our Senses
2. Building Herself a Better Brain: A Woman Labeled "Retarded" Discovers How to Heal Herself
3. Redesigning the Brain: A Scientist Changes Brains to Sharpen Perception and Memory, Increase Speed of Thought, and Heal Learning Problems
4. Acquiring Tastes and Loves: What Neuroplasticity Teaches Us About Sexual Attraction and Love
5. Midnight Resurrections: Stroke Victims Learn to Move and Speak Again
6. Brain Lock Unlocked: Using Plasticity to Stop Worries, Obsessions, Compulsions, and Bad Habits
7. Pain: The Dark Side of Plasticity
8. Imagination: How Thinking Makes It So
9. Turning Our Ghosts into Ancestors: Psychotherapy as a Neuroplastic Therapy
10. Rejuvenation: The Discovery of the Neuronal Stem Cell and Lessons for Preserving Our Brains
11. More than the Sum of Her Parts: A Woman Shows Us How Radically Plastic the Brain Can Be
Appendix 1: The Culturally Modified Brain
Appendix 2: Plasticity and the Idea of Progress

Highly recommended!

worth reading, with caveats, July 6, 2008
I have a general professional interest in psychology and brain science, which often leads me to be frustrated by the tendency towards reductionism and exaggeration. This book looked promising to me because the author is advertised as a psychoanalyst--something that usually does not mesh well with neuroscience. I was intrigued to see how Freud might think about modern psychology's biological determinism. On that score, I found The Brain That Changes Itself reasonably satisfying; the chapter on how neural plasticity can help us understand the impact of psychotherapy was among the best in the book. I very much appreciate the emphasis on how experience (including talk therapy) and culture, not just genes and drugs, shape the brain. That is something that is easy to miss in viewing the pretty brain scans of contemporary popular science. I also found the appendix on how culture works through neural plasticity interesting, although I don't find it helpful to define culture as Doidge seems to--something akin to cultivation and taste (a definition that leads to a problematic hierarchy of cultures based on somewhat arbitrary criteria). It is, however, important to recognize that culture and the brain have a reciprocal relationship.

My main concern with the book is that much of the argument seems to imply that the brain is infinitely malleable with the right exercises and effort. Though Doidge does note at points that plasticity is not infinite, he also seems to endorse the very American cultural script that individuals have total control over everything that happens to them. If babies are properly stimulated they will all be geniuses! If ADHD children go through the proper attentional exercises they will suddenly excel! If the elderly go to brain gyms they will never lose their memory! These, unfortunately, are primarily openings for marketers rather than scientific realities. Of course we have some control, and the key findings of neural plasticity research have been helpful in supporting that, but there are some things that are not just about effort--but also about care and community. Overall, I did find this book interesting and worth reading, but also found myself worried about what seemed to me strategic exaggeration.

Helpful, hopeful, heartwarming, April 17, 2007
I have taken an interest in mind/brain science over the past several months. Having started my nursing career on a medical neurology ward, I "grew up" with the localizationist interpretation of brain function and of the irreversible nature of brain damage. One couldn't help, however, having seen evidence in the course of ones practice that overwhelmingly contradicted the accepted view, so I was very pleased to see that so much has been done lately in researching the plasticity of the brain and its ability to "fix" or at least bypass damage to its structure.

The author, a psychologist with a practice in Canada, approaches his narrative almost as a journalist. He has researched the field and interviewed many of those who have been responsible for breakthroughs in mind/brain science. He gives a brief personal biography and characterization of the scientist as an individual, and then goes on to report the results of their research and the contributions that the work has provided individual patients. Here too the persons' lives and experiences are provided so that each becomes real to the reader. In this way the actual advances are given very personal meaning and significance.

In my opinion, the book should be a must read for neurology residents--if it or something like it has not already been added to the core curriculum. The research and the individual representative cases provided are an amazing illustration of what has and may be done in the near future of neurological diseases and disorders. Certainly anyone with a neurological disorder will find the information inspiring and hopeful. No longer is he or she expected to learn to "accept" their disability or to "learn to live with it." More active approaches to treatment seem to work far better than had been believed by earlier generations of neuroscientists and physiotherapists. Most important is the issue of providing treatment for disabilities, of extending and intensifying therapies not just to a fixed time decided upon arbitrarily but to a point when actual change and improvement are seen to occur. Some of the illustrative cases are certainly exceptional, maybe even just "lucky" individuals, but many of them derived considerable benefit from the approaches used to treat their disability by researchers.

Among the most amazing stories are those of stroke victims who have recovered almost entirely from their neurological damage and returned to an active life. Others are about new technologies for providing sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and greater autonomy to the movement impaired. Some of the findings about the aging brain are especially interesting and hopeful. In fact I was so impressed with some of it, that I gave the book to a friend who also worked in neurology in "the old days" and who is now dealing with the issues of living with her mother whose memory is gradually failing and whose everyday life is getting to be more and more difficult and complicated.

A superb book.

The Review That Wrote Itself, March 27, 2007
A revolution is now sweeping through the field of brain science, and this book chronicles the stories of the men and women who have ushered in a new age. The brain is no longer viewed as a machine that is hard-wired early in life, unable to adapt and destined to "wear out" with age. Instead, we learn that scientists are beginning to unlock the secrets of the powerful, lifelong, adaptability - or "plasticity" - of the brain. The implications are enormous for treating neurological disease, for addressing the aging process and for dramatic improvements in human performance. Author Norman Doidge is a psychiatrist on the Columbia faculty and he tells one spell-binding story after another, as he travels the globe interviewing the scientists and their subjects who are on the cutting edge of a new age. Each story is interwoven with the latest in brain science, told in a manner that is both simple and compelling. It may be hard to imagine that a book so rich in science can also be a page-turner, but this one is hard to set down.

Astonishing Stories of Damaged Brains Repairing Themselves, June 15, 2007
"The Brain That Changes Itself: Stories of Personal Triumph from the Frontiers of Brain Science" by Norman Doidge, is an easily readable, enjoyable, and thought-provoking book that gives the nonprofessional an overview of the new science of neuroplasticity--the brain's ability to reorganize itself by forming new neural connections over the life span. We learn that the brain is no longer thought of as being hard-wired, that people are no longer believed to be merely products of their genes and environment, and that damaged brains have the remarkable ability to repair themselves.

Doidge recounts stories of real people who have benefited from advances in neuroplasticity. He gives us just enough background information about each case so that we find ourselves genuinely caring about these people--each person comes to life, like characters in a fine novel. He tells us stories about stroke victims with major physical dysfunction who were able to recover nearly everything that they lost, and then go on to live normal lives again. There is an astonishing story of a woman who lost her balance mechanisms; with help from neuroplasticians, she was able to rewire her brain to use other senses to achieve the same goal. We learn that neuroplastic physicians can design high-technology devices capable of bringing sight to the blind, hearing to the deaf, and movement to the paralyzed. We learn about an utterly courageous woman who, completely on her own, was able to rewire her brain to compensate for a large number of severe learning disabilities. Eventually, she goes on to found a very successful network of schools devoted to the methodologies she used.

The basic concept is simple: the brain can change itself--rewire itself, so to speak. Often it needs only a little structured help to force it into making the new connections.

The implications of this new science are staggering. Imagine retraining the brains of the severely mentally disadvantaged--the learning disabled, the autistic...perhaps even the psychopath--so that they are able to function almost normally in society. Imagine the impact this new science may have on prison rehabilitation, special education, psychiatry, and rehabilitation therapy, to name but a few. This is a truly astonishing new frontier, and Doidge makes the concepts easy and enjoyable. I recommend this book highly.

Exciting new understanding of the brain written by 'true believer', May 28, 2008
This is a book that my men's book club enjoyed. I also enjoyed the book, but found the author to be a bit of true believer - if what he claims is true most every case of autism, paralysis, tinitis, and other neurological disorders can be fixed by taking advantage of the new understanding that the brain can create new routes and perhaps new nerves. The range of impact of this approach is staggering and will have implications for many years to come. The topics covered include sexual attraction, social skills, 'itches' of amputated limbs, fetishism, spatial reasoning, stroke recovery, feelings from phantom limbs, pain of phantom limbs, pornography addiction, cognitive decline, OCD, and even blindness. As you can tell, I found the information of various cases exciting and offering great promise, but I also found the lack of a balanced presentation by the author to be disconcerting.

Good Book but Definitely Not an Intro to Neuroscience, August 29, 2008
For decades now there has been a longstanding feud between biologists and psychologists on how the human brain forms and develops -- otherwise known as the nature versus nurture debate. Evolutionary biology teaches us that genes is destiny, and with his book the Canadian psychiatrist Norman Doidge makes his case for individual agency and cultural influences.

Like Jared Diamond's "Guns, Germs, & Steel" Dr. Doidge's book is not original research but rather a synthesis and summary from the frontiers of brain science. Supplemented with case studies "The Brain that Changes Itself" is about neuroplasticity, which argues that the brain is "plastic," or organic and malleable. For hundreds of years, thanks to thinkers like Rene Descartes, scientists have thought of the brain as mechanical, certain functions localized to certain sectors in this machine -- over time it rusts, with no chance of regeneration. Thanks to decades of research by a brave few who dared to defy their mainstream bethren and to the invention of brain scans neuroplasticity is now the accepted view.

The good news about neuroplasticity is that the brain you have is the brain you make it. New external stimuli (such as learning a new language) causes new neural connections in the brain (the "neurons that fire together wire together" rule of neuroplasticity). Often when we're learning a new language or skill after some fast improvement in the early stages we reach a plateau where we seem to have no improvement at all. Then after a while we suddenly make a great leap. That's because it takes time (as measured by nights of good sleep) for these neural connections to consolidate themselves but once they do we can move onto the next level. Of course if we don't keep on practising this skill these connections will weaken (the "use it or lose it" rule of plasticity) because space in the brain is, after all, limited.

Individual agency over our brains gives great hope to those who suffer from aging and brain damage. Scientists have developed brain exercises on the computer to help the elderly maintain a sharp and alert mind, and help stroke victims restore once lost cognitive functions.

The bad news is that the brain you have is the brain that you make it, and unfortunately most of us choose the path of least resistance and decide not to use it at all. As Dr. Doidge explains the plastic paradox means that exposing yourself to new stimuli can make the brain flexible but choosing to stay within your comfort zone will also make the brain rigid. Learning is fast and furious when we're kids but as we reach adulthood the brain becomes less plastic, making learning more difficult, and instead of choosing to learn most of us choose merely to rely on our current belief system. And when the world challenges this belief system we choose to ignore the world, and if forced we'll opt to fight the world. Thus, the plastic brain that allows us to learn new languages can also paradoxically make us intolerant and racist.

Indeed, as Dr. Doidge warns us, the individuals that he profiles who have managed to change themselves have done so because they make a honest and hard commitment to change themselves. Dr. Doidge's patients went into psychotherapy (which operates from the principles of neuroplasticity) to discover how trauma created unhealthy neural connections, and how through discussion, self-analysis, and will-power to create new neural connections. But this process is painful and costly and takes many years.

And it's so hard because the brain is so adept at protecting us. When we suffer a physical injury the brain will actually decide on what the appropriate level of pain we feel is. And when we're traumatized when we're young (for example, our mother dies or we're sexually abused) the brain will often decide to not convert this experience into long-term memory, and build defenses to disassociate ourselves from the possible pain of further trauma. The net effect is that our hippocampus -- the area of our frontal lobe that transfers experience into long-term memory, and thus what governs our ability to learn -- will shrink, thereby giving a scientific explanation to why adult victims of childhood trauma seem so adolescent and immature.

Neuroplasticity offers hope though: love. It seems that our neural network will automatically become more flexible in two critical periods of our adulthood: when we fall in love, and when we have children. Presumably it's because in both instances we need to urgently learn a new skillset to match the two most important circumstances we could find ourselves in. So being in love with someone does allow you to change who you are. Of course, being the circumspect doctor, Dr. Doidge reminds us that if we find ourselves in love with the wrong person we can change for the worst as well, seeing our confidence and healthy attitude suddenly shatter.

I'm not sure how Dr. Doidge would view my summary of his book, because I've taken great liberty in summarizing it. It's a pithy book and there's really a lot of refreshing and insightful material in the book but I'm not happy about the writing style -- which seems rushed and choppy to me -- and the organization, which hurts the clarity and effectiveness of the book. I've read quite a lot on the workings of the brain so I could follow through most chapters but I think a novice will have a particularly hard time reading this book. For a great introduction to how the mind works I suggest watching the BBC documentary series "The Human Series," hosted by Robert Winston -- possibly the greatest documentary series ever made.

Unhappy porn addicts, check out chapter 4, January 8, 2010
Doidge's chapter on acquired sexual tastes is much needed for today's heavy porn users, some of whom are experiencing miserable unexpected side effects from their Internet porn habits. He addresses familiar symptoms like desensitization to normal sex, erectile dysfunction, escalation to watching things the viewer doesn't even like just to climax, and the deterioration of relationships.

Without moralizing Doidge explains that, "Pornographers promise healthy pleasure and relief from sexual tension, but what they often deliver is addiction, tolerance, and an eventual decrease in pleasure." He makes the interesting point that if mankind's attraction to porn were purely the product of millions of years of evolution, tastes would be similar and wouldn't change over time. Instead,

"Hardcore pornography now explores the world of perversion, while softcore is now what hardcore was a few decades ago. ... When pornographers boast that they are pushing the envelope by introducing new, harder themes, what they don't say is that they must, because their customers are building up a tolerance to the content."

So if you want to understand the mechanics of how you (or your beloved) got hooked, this book is useful. Unfortunately, Doidge's patients were apparently mated men, and he seems to underestimate the difficultry of withdrawal from porn addiction for single guys whose addiction has resulted in social isolation. Single men need lots of social contact and support during the lengthy, often agonizing, withdrawal required to unhook from Internet porn use. (See "The Road To Excess" [...]) Still, Doidge's book offers hope just by virtue of explaining what has happened in guilt-free terms, and can motivate an unhappy user to face the challenge of withdrawal.

Seriously flawed, November 2, 2009
The most fascinating thing about this book is the nearly complete lack of honest critical response to Doidge's book.

Doidge, a Freudian psychoanalyst, has no training in neurobiology, and prior to this book has published next to nothing relevant to the topic. He makes two fundamental errors in the way he tells his story.

The first of these is the division he makes between "localizationists" and "neuroplasticians". No one working in neuroscience would take seriously the straw man position that Doidge puts forth for localizationists, that there is "one location, one function" and that the brain operates as an unchangeable machine. It is one of the most fundamental axioms of neuroscience that neural changes underlie any learning mechanism. No one would seriously postulate that brains *don't* change a great deal during the life of an organism. Even those involved in the practice of understanding how functions are localized (e.g., speech in the left hemisphere) would not suggest that there is anything special or unchangeable about the physical location, that this location couldn't change after brain injury. Mainstream neuroscience, not a marginalized fringe, has long been aware of the adaptations and plasticity that can happen after a stroke or other brain damage. Doidge seriously misrepresents himself as the champion of a movement.

The second error is the implication that brains are infinitely malleable. He presents a cherry-picked set of case studies and select experiments that might suggest that this is the case, but there is plenty of evidence to suggest exactly the opposite conclusion. Doidge even goes as far as to intimate that any neurological condition can be fixed with the right training. Autism, dyslexia, maybe even Alzheimer's. This is seriously misleading at best.

One of the traps that Doidge falls into is the excessive use of "brainspeak". Many of the examples and implications that he talks about are behavioral, and a brain description is really not the appropriate level. After a while, the term "brain map" has lost a good deal of it's punch as it's applied to anything at all. He suggests that Freud was ahead of his time because, in essence, psychotherapy is "changing your brain maps". Well, yes. But so is any learning at all; there's no privileged place for psychoanalysis. In essence, Doidge is trying to convince you that evidence for brain plasticity should let you know that YOUR brain (and life) can be changed. But in many ways the brainspeak is an unnecessary diversion. The world is full of stories of personal triumph, and those enough are evidence that personal triumph is possible. ... Read more

Editorial Review

The astonishing New York Times bestseller that chronicles how a brain scientist's own stroke led to enlightenment

On December 10, 1996, Jill Bolte Taylor, a thirty-seven- year-old Harvard-trained brain scientist experienced a massive stroke in the left hemisphere of her brain. As she observed her mind deteriorate to the point that she could not walk, talk, read, write, or recall any of her life-all within four hours-Taylor alternated between the euphoria of the intuitive and kinesthetic right brain, in which she felt a sense of complete well-being and peace, and the logical, sequential left brain, which recognized she was having a stroke and enabled her to seek help before she was completely lost. It would take her eight years to fully recover.

For Taylor, her stroke was a blessing and a revelation. It taught her that by "stepping to the right" of our left brains, we can uncover feelings of well-being that are often sidelined by "brain chatter." Reaching wide audiences through her talk at the Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) conference and her appearance on Oprah's online Soul Series, Taylor provides a valuable recovery guide for those touched by brain injury and an inspiring testimony that inner peace is accessible to anyone. ... Read more

Reviews

Important
This is, indeed, a first-person description of stroke by a scientifically and dare I say it -- spiritually -- sophisticated person. The author describes a range of experiences that make sense given our knowledge of localization of function. I'm not sure that such a detailed and consistent report by a scientist is available anywhere else. As such, this story is unusual and important. Moreover the author reports how she turned her stroke into an opportunity for profound wisdom and insight. Amazing stuff! And this may save lives.

Personally, I don't share all the author's ideas about strict functional localization in the brain... but that is secondary and doesn't detract from my admiration of her remarkable contribution.

My enjoyment of this book was enhanced considerably by the material and links at the author's website. She has posted a number of video and audio presentations, radio shows, etc.

Stroke of Brilliance!
I first came across Jill Bolte Taylor, Phd when her speech at TED (an annual conference devoted to Technology, Entertainment, Design) went viral. In it, she describes how she witnessed herself having a stroke and the subsequent feeling of peace that enveloped her when her logical left brain shut down and her right brain became dominant. I became intrigued after watching the video and then read the book.

The book expounds on her experience while having the stroke and her subsequent recovery. It was amazing on many levels:
(1) She gives a 1st person narrative of her experience of the stroke and recovery but she doesn't portray it as something we should all pity and feel sorry for. Instead, she lays it out not unlike an explorer discovering new territory, full of suspense and wonder.

(2) She gives incredible tips on how to communicate with and care for stroke victims. For e.g., some people would yell at her after they saw she didn't understand what they were saying. However, she wasn't deaf. She could only process one word at a time. If those people would have spoken more slowly rather than loudly, she would have been able to understand them. This is something that would never have occurred to me if I hadn't read this book.

(3) She takes us on a tour of the 'mystical' right side of her brain which little is known about and whose capabilities in today's world seem to be dismissed. She says the right side of the brain is the gateway to enlightenment and nirvana. She shares tips on how to 'tend the garden of your mind' and to interrupt or stop those stories we all tell ourselves over and over again (usually about how we are deficient, not good enough, etc.). She calls them loops.

Dr. Taylor's tips about how we can all achieve nirvana by accessing the right side of the brain as a conscious process is worth the price of the book many times over. We all have a "loop of deep inner peace" wired into our neurological circuitry in our right brain and we can consciously choose to run this loop whenever we wish.

Closely related to this topic are books by Ariel & Shya Kane. They've written three outstanding books: Working on Yourself Doesn't Work: The 3 Simple Ideas That Will Instantaneously Transform Your Life, How to Create a Magical Relationship: The 3 Simple Ideas that Will Instantaneously Transform Your Love Life & Being Here: Modern Day Tales of Enlightenment. The Kanes have been teaching about accessing the magic of the right-side of the brain for over 20 years and their book is chock full of tips, and stories on how to recognize those loops Dr. Taylor talks about and how to bypass them. If you're serious about getting enlightened, get Dr. Taylor's and the Kanes' books NOW!

Required Reading
My wife is a "massive" stroke victim. Her survival and recovery themselves were miracles. We are very fortunate. But one of the god-given gifts that has not returned is her speech. And while as a husband of 45 years when asked how she is doing often facetiously say that her loss of speech "is not all bad", I feel for her occasional frustration as she stumbles in her attempt to convey her feelings - fortunately, it is only occasional. We were warned it would be much, much worse.

But the bottom line, this book has restored her faith in the possibilities of even further recovery. It should be required reading for all stoke victims whose speech was affected. Likewise, for all caretakers of those victims. For just to see the light shine in her eye as she showed me many passages in the book that still gave her hope was well worth the price and time involved.

Fantastic!
I've been recommending My Stroke of Insight to nearly everyone I know. Jill provides a great moment-by-moment account of her stroke, a potentially devasting event many of my relatives have experienced. I deeply admire her determination to work through it. She also does one of the best jobs of describing brain function I've ever run across. I came away with a renewed sense of understanding, wonder and hopefulness about the capabilities of the human brain. Highly recommended!

Glimpse Inside the Mind of Another
Dr Taylor shows there are many kinds of knowledge, but maybe only one kind of awareness. The specialjourney that "Stroke of Insight" chronicles is surprising. It's a lesson how new learning, understanding and benefit can come of an experience that most would consider a severe blow. If you have the courage to face it and see it.

The ability to experience something on several levels, beyond the daily vision of most of us, and then to share it in such a clear and thoughful account is rare. In this book, Dr Taylor shows her courage doesn't end with facing pain, loss or mortality, but she also now breaks convention and presents her ideas and experience in full view, with their emotional and philosophical content included. Not only was she inspired by her own journey, but she shares the inspiration directly with the reader.

More than just an interesting read, this is one of the books that lets the reader peek inside the mind of another and, in doing so, to learn more about the self and the nature of our existence. Well worth your time.

Great book
How often do you get to hear a neuroscientist describe her own stroke?
This is an amazing story on three levels; physical, emotional, and spiritual. Dr. Jill's description of her eight year recovery is both uplifting and powerful. But the spiritual aspect is alone worth the price of admission. (I won't spoil it for you.)

Dr. Bolte-Taylor is not a writer of prose. Her style is that of someone experienced in writing scientific papers; factual, concise and parsimonious. But the content! That is what makes this a great book in my opinion.

A quick read but a powerful story.

Danny

My Stroke of Insight
An absolutely wonderful journey by a brain anatomist who suffered a stroke. Her resilience, her deep understanding of the condition and lessons to be learned by her and other health care professionals is outstanding. A must read for anyone whether faced with a health problem or not. Is a mind awakening experience!!! ... Read more

Editorial Review

ONCE IN NINE LIVES, SOMETHING EXTRAORDINARY HAPPENS.
 
The last thing Gwen Cooper wanted was another cat. She already had two, not to mention a phenomenally underpaying job and a recently broken heart. Then Gwen’s veterinarian called with a story about a three-week-old eyeless kitten who’d been abandoned. It was love at first sight.

Everyone warned that Homer would always be an “underachiever.” But the kitten nobody believed in quickly grew into a three-pound dynamo with a giant heart who eagerly made friends with every human who crossed his path. Homer scaled seven-foot bookcases with ease, survived being trapped alone for days after 9/11 in an apartment near the World Trade Center, and even saved Gwen’s life when he chased off an intruder who broke into their home in the middle of the night. But it was Homer’s unswerving loyalty, his infinite capacity for love, and his joy in the face of all obstacles that transformed Gwen’s life. And by the time she met the man she would marry, she realized that Homer had taught her the most valuable lesson of all: Love isn’t something you see with your eyes. ... Read more

Reviews

An uplifting tale of adventure and love

Editorial Review

“I rehabilitate dogs. I train people.” —Cesar Millan

There are at least 68 million dogs in America, and their owners lavish billions of dollars on them every year. So why do so many pampered pets have problems? In this definitive and accessible guide, Cesar Millan—star of National Geographic Channel’s hit show Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan—reveals what dogs truly need to live a happy and fulfilled life.

From his appearances on The Oprah Winfrey Show to his roster of celebrity clients to his reality television series, Cesar Millan is America’s most sought-after dog-behavior expert. But Cesar is not a trainer in the traditional sense—his expertise lies in his unique ability to comprehend dog psychology. Tracing his own amazing journey from a clay-walled farm in Mexico to the celebrity palaces of Los Angeles, Cesar recounts how he learned what makes dogs tick. In Cesar’s Way, he shares this wisdom, laying the groundwork for you to have stronger, more satisfying relationships with your canine companions.

Cesar’s formula for a contented and balanced dog seems impossibly simple: exercise, discipline, and affection, in that order. Taking readers through the basics of dog psychology and behavior, Cesar shares the inside details of some of his most fascinating cases, using them to illustrate how common behavior issues develop and, more important, how they can be corrected.

Whether you’re having issues with your dog or just want to make a good bond even stronger,this book will give you a deeper appreciation of how your dog sees the world, and it will help make your relationship with your beloved pet a richer and more rewarding one.


Learn what goes on inside your dog’s mind and develop a positive, fulfilling relationship with your best friend

In Cesar’s Way, Cesar Millan—nationally recognized dog expert and star of National Geographic Channel’s hit show Dog Whisperer with Cesar Millan—helps you see the world through the eyes of your dog so you can finally eliminate problem behaviors. You’ll learn:

• What your dog really needs may not be what you’re giving him

• Why a dog’s natural pack instincts are the key to your happy relationship

• How to relate to your dog on a canine level

• There are no “problem breeds,” just problem owners

• Why every dog needs a job

• How to choose a dog who’s right for you and your family

• The difference between discipline and punishment

• And much more!

Filled with fascinating anecdotes about Cesar’s longtime clients, and including forewords by the president of the International Association of Canine Professionals and Jada Pinkett Smith, this is the only book you’ll need to forge a new, more rewarding connection with your four-legged companion.




Also available as a Random House AudioBook


From the Hardcover edition. ... Read more

Reviews

Cesar says dogs need exercise, discipline and affection in that order! Read and you'll know why., April 12, 2006
This is a wonderful reference book and makes for good reading as well. I bought the book to give as a gift to a young couple whose dog needs some behavior modification. I planned to quickly scan through it to get an idea of its contents, wrap it up, and give it away. However, I ended up reading it word for word and will add it to our library! (I can think of several dog owners and parents who could use the concepts in this book for raising both dogs and children. I'll probably end up buying several copies as gifts.)

I notice that one reviewer complained about the frequent reference to the pack leader concept Cesar writes about. Perhaps that reader is unaware that in a reference book clarification in the form of repetition is needed for those who are looking up only one or two segments at a time, such as "Rules, Boundaries, and Limitations," or "Dominance Aggression." I found Cesar's personal history and anecdotal material about him and others (Oprah Winfrey has a whole section on the relationship between her and her dog, Sophie) very interesting and enlightening. The book is clearly and concisely written. It is easy to see that Melissa Jo Peltier's writing abilities were very helpful to Cesar.

Cesar was born in Culiacan, Mexico, and came here in 1990. He is now applying for U.S. citizenship. He has quite a story to tell about his childhood and his special relationship with dogs from the time he was a small boy. When he came here he noticed with dismay that American dogs had a number of "issues" related primarily to the fact that we Americans view our dogs as "four-legged humans" instead of dogs (animals). Our dogs need us to be calm-assertive pack leaders and to provide them with exercise, discipline and affection in that order. Cesar gives many illustrations of how this concept works and the fact that dogs use smell and the sixth sense of energy to evaluate other dogs and animals, including humans.

I highly recommend this book to dog owners and, as mentioned earlier, to those contemplating having children or who already have children who need help. In a nation with increasing numbers of obese children, I was struck by the #1 need of dogs as stated by Cesar: EXERCISE. Perhaps, we might consider the same order of needs for our children: exercise, discipline, and affection in order to grow happy, healthy, productive human adults.

Carolyn Rowe Hill

Common sense makes sense....., June 18, 2006
I have read the negative reviews of all the "spoiled-sports" who disagree with Cesar Millan's philosophy of the dog-human relationship. I feel they are merely jealous of the fact that he has become a "media idol" in the dog-training arena and is now pulling in the big bucks.

As a dog rescuer who has taken in and re-homed over a thousand dogs over the past 10 years, I just wish Cesar had been around back when I first became so deeply involved in "pack mentality." I'm sure that I could have made some better decisions, saved even more dogs' lives, and dealt more effectively with some behavior issues.

Of course, time breeds experience, and by the time I first saw Cesar on the National Geographic Channel last year, I realized to my great pleasure that many of the things I had learned and was now utilizing myself were based on the very premise Cesar promotes.

Cesar's philosophy is based on common sense: humans are human and dogs are dogs. Most dog owners become oblivious to any common sense they may have possessed prior to adding a dog to the household when they bring their "new baby" home.

There is nothing wrong with a "calm and assertive" approach with dogs, and nothing equally wrong with the dog being "calm and submissive." This does not mean that you will have a frightened dog that will submissively urinate, cower in the corner or become a fear-biter.

As the supposedly more intelligent and sensitive being, you have to approach your relationship with your dog in a common sense manner and tempered with consideration for the natural temperament of the particular dog. But I do share and support the premise that dogs are much happier when they know that their human is the one "in charge." They are relaxed, content and much more prone to "be good."

I'm sure there are many other well-qualified dog trainers across the country, some of whom have written good dog-training books, utilizing equally-effective methods of training. There is and never will be "one" form only, but to trash Cesar Millan's methods is to me nothing more than an undeserved "cheap shot."

It just works, April 4, 2006
I have owned purebred field Springer Spaniels and a pure bred Border Collie. I didn't believe in yelling or punishment myself. I found that my dogs paid more attention to my talking quietly and to a quiet rebuke than yelling ever did. It worked well for me in the past and some arrogance on my part assumed that I knew it all. I didn't.

When the last of my dogs died this year, I decided I wanted to have another Border Collie as my last dog before I died. This dog I would find, would be my ultimate challenge though. At 12 weeks of age I excused his behavior because I'm told he is a Taurus. A few months later he began to attack his food dish in what I can only describe as "rabid". Shortly after that he bit me when I walked by him while he was eating.

I was at a loss to what to do. He was a puppy. ...But a puppy like this you don't want to grow into a dog I thought. Then I saw a show called the Dog Whisperer. It made sense to me (hell I was brought up English! - if not for me why not the dog?) I was really worried that I might have to put this dog down until then.

I tried it Cesar's way. I started walking and running the dog in my backfield for at least 45 minutes. What a charmer he became! I added some new rules "no couch" and he got even better. If my husband would stop letting him into his lap he would be much better I am sure!

Finally, I would like to add that as much as I worried about my dog (which I no longer worry about) at least one dog owner I know gave up on his once. He regretted his decision. Thanks to Cesar I don't have to make that same decision.

Cesar's Way Works, September 30, 2006
I have been a dog parent for years and have consistently had a pack of dogs (3, 4, 5 at a time). I have tried positive reinforcement alone and it doesn't work with dogs that have any tendency towards being stubborn, willful, or independent. When you have a pack of dogs you have to be the pack leader otherwise chaos will reign in your household. Before I began using Cesar's methods my dogs tended to misbehave. They are much happier and better behaved with me being the pack leader.

No Cesar's methods are not new, but that doesn't mean they aren't the correct methods. Just as our society has coddled our children to the point they have become spoiled brats, we have coddled our pets so they run a muck in our houses. Dogs are not humans, and we need to work with their innate behavior. Treating them as if they think like humans is a waste of time and is deterimental to their happiness.

People who critize Cesar's methods really don't undertand them. They are not about fear or pain. Tapping your dog with your foot, correcting it with a collar, getting its attention with a unique noise is not about fear or pain. Dogs, like children, must have "boundaries and limitations" and dogs are much happier when their human is in charge and makes them feel calm, secure, and safe.

Cesar does not say that you cannot use positive reinforcement for training. Cesar's methods are not for training, they are for creating a foundation for a stong and peaceful relationship with your dog(s).

Your Dog Is Talking To You, August 5, 2006
I've had dogs all my life, but this book gave me a whole new perspective.

Cesar Millan's methods are based on the behavior of dogs living within packs. Packs are organised to the extent that there are pack leaders and followers. Instinctively, dogs need packs for survival, so they naturally follow the strongest and most stable dog and weed out weak, unstable dogs who threaten the effectiveness of the pack. When dogs are removed from their natural state, their pack instincts must be compensated or they become unstable.

The root of most dog problems that Millan is asked to correct originate not with the dogs, but with their owners who often view their dogs as furry little people. Even those dog owners who recognise that dogs are not people, use human psychology on their dogs. This often takes the form of affection and is often given to soothe the dog when it is acting stressed. But, affection given at the wrong time, when the dog is stressed, rewards the dog's behavior and makes matters worse.

Millan has several formulas that he applies to different situations. If you accept that dogs are pack animals, it all makes sense. If you want to control your dog, you have to become the pack leader. As pack leader, you cannot be unstable. You must be calm and assertive or the dog will dismiss you as the leader, though he might be fearful. As pack leader, you need to give the dog what he needs: exercise (dogs roam all day), discipline (packs are organised and the leader sets the rules, boundaries, and limitations) and affection, in that order. People often mess-up their dogs by giving affection and not much else. This results in the dog assuming, in it's mind, the role of pack leader. Every pack needs a leader and if you are not it, the dog will be.

Millan says that he rehabilitates dogs and trains people. Many of the situations he encounters are amusing, because some neuroses can be funny. But, once you get it (understand what you're seeing and why it's happening), the causes of the neuroses, along with the cures, become clear. Much of the cure for dog problems is in understanding what your dog's movements are telling you and immediately acting to short circuit escalating behaviors. They telegraph virtually everything if you are attentive and understand the signals. Bad behavior can by stopped immediately by snapping them out of a state of mind that will lead, often within a second or two, to unwanted behavior.

I think Millan's book is a practical and useful how-to guide and it gives you a basic understanding for building a mutually rewarding relationship with our flop-eared, furry friends.

Cesar saved me and my dog, May 13, 2006
Four and half years ago, before Cesar had a book or a show, and after I had been told by numerous dog trainers in LA that my dog would never be social with other dogs, I contacted Cesar Milan. It was the best thing I could have ever done for me and my beloved but extremely dog-aggressive 85lb male pit bull. 6 years before this, I had rescued/stole this full grown, abused, fighting pit bull and made him my pet. He had been starved, fought over and over, fed hot sauce and gun powder to make him mean and was a mess. With my care, he turned out to be the best behaved, sweetest, most loving dog except for one major problem.....he could not be near another dog without trying to kill it. He listened and obeyed everthing else I wanted him to do except control his urge to maul other dogs. I was told over and over that I would never be able to change his "pit bull" behavior. Cesar was the only person that told me that he could rehabilitate my dog so I could take him to dog parks and not have to walk him with a muzzle in fear that around the corner we would run into another dog and disaster would strike. He kept my dog at his facility in South Central for 5 weeks and allowed me to be a part of his pack walks and trips to the beach. I learned so much from him and so did my dog. Is Cesar rough? Yes, somewhat. But I would never allow my dog to be hurt or abused and when you are dealing with dominant aggressive pit bulls that can kill another dog in a matter of seconds, I think you need to be a little rough. No other trainers would touch my dog, and Cesar did without hesitation. He taught me so much with his persistant calmness and extreme kindness and that will always be appreciated by me. My beloved pit bull recently passed away at a ripe old age of 14. His last 4 years were spent socializing with other dogs and enjoying being at the off leash park in Runyon Canyon. Cesar rehabilitated my 8 year old pit bull and made it possible for me live peacefully in a dog-friendly apartment complex. I can tell you from my experience that Cesar's methods work. His help made my dog and me alot happier and able to enjoy our last years together in a much richer way than if I had never met him. Kudos to Cesar!

Want a Happier Dog?, May 5, 2006
We adopted a dog from an abusive home that was destined to be put to sleep. Thinking that we knew how to handle her we struggled for weeks, without success, using 'tried and true' methods of other trainers. While we made some progress her behavior was still unsatisfactory. Then, we bought this book and started watching Dog Whisperer. What a change.

Within two weeks we were able to change her into a very different animal. Now she walks by our side - doesn't lunge or pull, and she's a much happier dog than we've seen before. I can't believe the change in this dog. Her behavior at home is greatly improved also - she's quieter, more affectionate, and pays attention when we speak to her.

While she still has many of the 'fears' aquired in her previous abusive home, one by one we're working through those also.

The basis of Cesar's training is three-fold. Exercise, discipline and affection - in that order. He teaches that a dog is a pack animal that needs a leader. If you're not the pack leader then the dog will take on that role with the disasterous results you're probably seeing in your own dog. This is the key and that's where most dog-owners run into trouble.

Before ANY training can start the dog needs to be exercised. 30-45 minutes, twice a day. Cesar details HOW to walk a dog. It's amazing how few owners know how to walk their dog. In a pack the leader is always in front, and your dog should always be next to you or at heel - never in front.

Once the dog has expended that excess energy he's ready to accept training. It's so simple that it was hard for us to accept at first. And after the exercise and training, the dog needs affection - Cesar recommends quiet massage. The sequence of these three leaves the dog quiet, submissive and happy. At your next training session he will have retained that memory of a pleasurable experience, and will respond even better.

The book gives details about how you, as the pack leader, must present yourself to the dog; not weak, intimidated, excited or angry, but assertive and strong. If you really pay attention to what he's saying and follow his guidance, you will have a much happier household.

Cesar's Way is a wonderful book that will yield amazing results - provided you read it carefully and pay attention to what he's saying.

A Great Read for Dog Owners, July 12, 2006
This book (1) provides a good though somewhat general overview of Cesar Milan's key approaches in what he calls "dog psychology and rehabilitation;" and (2) summarizes for his readers Milan's background and how he came to be so successful doing what he is doing today. On those two accounts, the book is a light, engaging, and thoroughly recommendable read.

I am a casual fan of Milan's show, but before reading the book was somewhat wary about all the hype surrounding it. Since finishing it, I've found that many of the criticisms thrown at it by other readers are unfair or unfounded.

Some readers have complained that the book, rather than being a thorough, step-by-step manual for dog training, focuses largely on "fluff" like details of Milan's life. However, Milan makes it clear throughout 'Cesar's Way' that the focus of his work is not dog training per se, but changing the pet-owner relationship by teaching the human basic proper ways of interaction and the right attitudes to adopt with the dog. With this fact in mind, I think Milan takes the right approach in focusing on making his ideas clear and easy to understand rather than providing a-to-z details on what exactly one should do in every possible situation.

Also, many of the people buying this book will be fans of his TV show who are curious to learn more about Milan's background, and I think the book balances these two different aims - autobiography and dog guide - well. Besides, Milan's story makes for a pretty good read: it's the classic hard-working immigrant rags-to-riches tale, and he tells it with humor and humility.

I also find it admirable that Cesar doesn't overstep the boundaries of his expertise, for example, when he explains the importance of displaying self-confidence around your pet, and then suggests to the reader that other sources (e.g., self-help books) would serve as good guides for developing a confident attitude. I mention this because there are many books that would go on to include an unnecessary chapter or two on developing your confidence, and Milan is smart enough to stick throughout the book to what he knows best, dogs.

Others have also complained that Cesar is a name-dropper. For example, in his foreward he thanks Jada Pinkett Smith and a slew of other celebrities, but can't remember the names of the owners of a dog grooming salon who gave him his first job sixteen years ago. Although he does mention a lot of celebrities throughout his book (and even very obviously dings Michael Eisner, though not by name), I never found the tone of his writing to be self-congratulatory or smug. Plus, given all the things he claimed Smith did to help him in his career, I think the gushing props in a semi-autobiographical work is not out of line. And as for those dog groomers, I have to admit that I can't remember the names of many casual acquaintances from sixteen years ago, either.

Finally, there are a few critics whose claims about Cesar's methodology are simply untrue. For example, some readers remarked about how harsh it seems that he never allows dogs to walk in front of their humans. This is in fact untrue; Milan writes that loosening the leash and allowing your dog to roam or wander in front of you for a little while is alright, as long as you first establish yourself as the leader by walking the dog alongside or behind you for at least a few minutes. Other claims of harshness also seem unsubstantiated.

In summary, Milan's down-to-earth, common sense approach to dog training is a welcome breath of fresh air in the sometimes kooky world of pet authorities (thankfully, "dog whisperer" is not an allusion to yet another pet psychic). I would wholly recommend this book to every dog owner as a general guide book for developing a healthy, well-functioning relationship with one's dog.

Discipline AND positive reinforcement, May 20, 2006
This book is different.

While I am a big fan of positive reinforcement (PR) in teaching new behavior to many creatures, including dogs and humans, it has its limits, especially where there are so many natural reinforcers in a dog's environment that are beyond the trainer's control.

Millan's methods are controversial among dog experts, because his emphasis is on the UN-conditioned behavior that dogs have evolved over thousands of years. Dogs hunt in packs, and coordination among the pack members depends on discipline and leadership. The successful pack needs a strong leader who commands unthinking and immediate obedience. Dogs are born understanding this. They are born to either lead or to follow; there is no middle way. There is no democracy in the dog world.

Cesar Millan capitalizes on this dog-nature to obtain quick results when dogs live among humans. Dogs are not equipped to lead humans; dogs cannot even open doors nor can they use the telephone. The proper role of a dog in human society is to follow, not to lead.

That is why Cesar teaches the human how to lead the pack, using mild aversive control when necessary. This is a problem for the loving dog owner who does not understand dog nature and wants to be just the dog's friend, not its leader. If the human will not lead, the dog must and will try to fill the leadership vacuum, with unfortunate results.

The best way to be your dog's friend is to first be its leader. Your dog will relax into the follower role and will, in fact be the happier for it.

So save the PR for teaching tricks and stunts. Love your dog, but buy this book!

Don't disparage this man & his techniques...they work!!, October 27, 2006
For 7 years I've dealt with a standard poodle with issues. Having had this breed for over 40 years, I certainly thought they were perfect. Living in Texas, I flew to CA to get that perfect puppy from a well known breeder. Well, believe me, she was unlike any poodles I'd ever owned before...right from the beginning. It was a shock to me as from my young years, I'd been able to befriend & work with any dog...aggressive or not.

Finally, exasperated, I had a trainer come to my home and she spent weeks working with my dog. She told me she'd only ever worked with one more difficult or stubborn than mine & he was half wolf. She did what she could & it seemed that was all I could do.

I'd groomed my own poodles in the past but there was no way I could with this girl.

We moved to a new state 3 months ago & I suddenly had the National Geographic channel & luckily spotted the show "Dog Whisperer" on my new tv lineup. That was the beginning of learning a whole new way of dealing with aggression in my dog & for the first time in years, I'm seeing much success.

I'm making progress bathing and grooming & the worst issue of nail trimming is bettering. By applying the methods I've learned (and learning), it's working!!

Cesar's methods while authoratative, are most certainly humane and some criticisms I read are ridiculous. Certainly others have a right to disagree with his methods...but to deliberately use abusive terms to describe those methods is not only false, but in my estimation, totally unfair!!!

Cesar's Way is a good basic book that can be used often...and it helps me to better understand the dog mind and how to deal with many issues.

Incidentally, I've shared my findings of Mr. Millan's methods with family & friends & they're finding answers to their own dog issues...which has been invaluable to them & changed forever the lives of their animals. One daughter kept her puppy kenneled constantly because he was so uncontrollable & tho she felt badly to do so, she felt she had no choice. After learning of Cesar Millan's methods, that's a thing of the past & she is able to deal with the issues in a way that is good for her and provides a "real" life for her puppy.

I hope those who read all feedback will be open to the honest appraisals that are included. Aggression, for one, is not pleasant to live with & for the first time, we're moving in the right direction & I hope others might find some solutions as well. ... Read more

Editorial Review

Reviews

Comparisons to Blink are inevitable
Lehrer takes aim squarely at Malcolm Gladwell's book, Blink, and, for my money, hits a home run. How We Decide is clearly and interestingly written, like Gladwell, but is more substantiated with recent neuroscience research. Lehrer's conclusion is also more nuanced, i.e., the best way to make a decision depends on different factors, and argues for the effectiveness and importance of monitoring our own thought process.

This is one talented young man. I read Lehrer's first book about Proust and neuroscience, and while I was super impressed with his intellect, it required serious effort to read and understand. How We Decide is a lighter read, but just as original and significant in its own way.

A brilliant analysis of "the power of the emotional brain"

With regard to neuroscience, I am the among non-scholars who have a keen interest in what the brain and mind are and how they function, and am especially interested in how decisions are made. In recent years, I have read a variety of books that have helped me to increase my knowledge in these specific areas. They include William Calvin's How Brains Think: Evolving Intelligence, Then and Now, Gerald Edelman's Bright Air, Brilliant Fire: On The Matter Of The Mind, Guy Claxton's Hare Brain, Tortoise Mind: How Intelligence Increases When You Think Less, Howard Gardner's Five Minds for the Future, Malcolm Gladwell's Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking, and most recently, Torkel Klingberg's The Overflowing Brain: Information Overload and the Limits of Working Memory. I am grateful to these and other volumes for increasing my understanding of the decision-making process while realizing that is still so much more that I need to know. Hence my interest in Jonah Lehrer's book, How We Decide.

In the Introduction in which he shares an experience aboard a simulated flight landing at Tokyo Narita International Airport, Lehrer observes: "In the end, the difference between landing my plane in one piece and my dying in a fiery crash came down to a single decision made in the panicked moments after the engine fire...This book is about how we make decisions. It's about airline pilots, NFL quarterbacks, television directors, poker players, professional investors, and serial killers...[Ever since the ancient Greeks, assumptions about decision making have revolved around a single theme: humans are ration.] There's only one problem with this assumption of human rationality: It's not how the brain works...We can look inside the brain and see how humans think: the black box has been broken open. It turns out we weren't designed to be rational creatures...Whenever someone makes a decision, the brain is awash in feeling, driven by its inexplicable passions. Even when a person tries to be reasonable and restrained, these emotional impulses secretly influence judgment...Knowing how the mind [i.e. `a powerful biological machine'] works is useful knowledge, since it shows us how to get the most out of the machine. But the brain doesn't exist in a vacuum; all decisions are made in the context of the real world."

Then in the Coda, Lehrer re-visits the approach into the Tokyo airport that, we now realize, serves as the central metaphor in his book. "When the onboard computers and pilots properly interact, it's an ideal model for decision-making. The rational brain (the pilot) and the emotional brain (the cockpit computers) exist in perfect equilibrium, each system focusing on those areas in which it has a comparative advantage. The reason planes are so safe, areas in which it has a competitive advantage. The reason planes are so safe, even though both the pilot and the autopilot are fallible, is that both systems are constantly working to correct each other. Mistakes are fixed before they spiral out of control." The safe landing of U.S. Airways Flight 1549 on the Hudson River on January 15th offers a more recent example of what Lehrer calls "perfect equilibrium" between Captain Chesley ("Sully") Sullenberger and the computers aboard the Airbus A320.

There are many valuable insights within Lehrer's narrative. Here are several that caught my eye, albeit quoted out of context.

"The process of thinking requires feeling, for feelings are what let us understand all the information that we can't directly comprehend. Reason without emotion is impotent." (Page 26)

"Unless you experience the unpleasant symptoms of being wrong, your brain will never revise its models. Before your neurons can succeed, they must repeatedly fail. There are no shortcuts for this painstaking process." (Page 54)

"The ability to supervise itself, to exercise authority over its own decision-making process, is one of the most mysterious talents of the human brain. Such a mental maneuver is known as executive control, since thoughts are directed from the tip down, like a CEO issuing orders." (Page 116)

"As it happens, some of our most important decisions are about how to treat other people. The human being is a social animal, endowed with a brain that shapes social behavior. By understanding how the brain makes these decisions, we can gain insight into one of the most unique aspects of human nature: morality." (Page 166) Lehrer devotes all of Chapter 6, The Mortal Mind, to this important "aspect." For
example:

"At its core, moral decision-making is about sympathy. We abhor violence because we know violence hurts. We treat others fairly because we know what it feels like to be treated unfairly. We reject suffering because we can imagine what it's like to suffer. Our minds naturally bind us together, so we can't help but follow the advice of Luke: `And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise." (Page 180)

Actually, I highlighted dozens of other passages but this review is already longer than I originally intended so I will quote no others. Because I think so highly of this book, I wanted to allow Lehrer sufficient opportunity to share at least a few of his thoughts with those who read this review. Credit him with a brilliant achievement: Enabling his readers to make better decisions by helping them to "see" themselves as they really are by carefully examining that is inside the "black box of the human brain." Only by doing so can we "honestly assess our flaws and talents, our strengths and shortcomings. For the first time [Lehrer claims], such a vision is possible. We finally have tools that can piece the mystery of the mind, revealing the intricate machinery that shapes our behavior. Now we need to put this knowledge."

I am unqualified to comment on Jonah Lehrer's claim that what he offers enables the aforementioned "vision" for the first time. However, he has certainly increased both my awareness and my understanding of what may be in my own "black box."

One of the best in the field of neuroscience
"If you're going to take one idea away from this book, take this one: Whenever you make a decision, be aware of the kind of decision you are making and the kind of thought process it requires."

If you think about a book on human behaviours, unexpected findings, and researches, you could probably think of a lot of them. If you add neuroscience to the mix, you would probably think of a few. But if you think of that kind of book with a practical and solid guideline for you to change how you live your life, I doubt you could find that many. And "How We Decide" by Jonah Lehrer falls in that category.

The book is about `decisions' and how they are made by rationality and emotions from you brain (there are lots of parts within the frontal cortex but I'm not sure which). This is another typical book of this genre but let me tell you why should you `decide' to get this book.

Contents

The Quarterback in the Pocket
The first story starts with the 2002 Super Bowl and how Tom Brady made the decision that led the team to victory. Lehrer moved onto stories of Plato and the very interesting one is the man who had a brain damage and lost emotions and eventually, he just could not `decide'. This chapter focuses on `emotion' and how it is crucial to decision making.

The Predictions of Dopamine
The chapter begins with the story of Lieutenant Commander Michael Riley who commanded a British destroyer and decided to do something vital during the Persian Gulf War (I'm not going to spoil the story). The author also wrote about Bill Robertie, a chess master, a widely respected poker expert, and a backgammon champion. By the way, this is not my field but Dopamine is the brain region (or cell, or neurons, or whatever) that links our emotion to expectations.

Fooled by a Feeling
Emotions cannot do everything. The author wrote about Ann Klinestiver, a Parkinson teacher who became a slot machine addict (and lost literally almost everything in life) AFTER her Parkinson's disease `treatment'. The chapter moves onto basketball player's hot hands, stock investment, and a game show `Deal or No Deal'. The epic part of this chapter is about credit card (I am personally moved by this part and it sent shiver down my spine). The core of this chapter that wild feelings or emotions can bring us down.

The Uses of Reason
The story of a firefighter who survive the thick wall of raging fire starts the chapter perfectly because it is about how reasons are crucial at certain times. There is also another heartfelt story about a young girl, Mary, who were a brilliant and bright girl with bright future but one day she became different and ruined her life drinking, sleeping around and became angry a lot. She was eventually infected by HIV because of her brain tumor! Another great story in this chapter is how Captain Al Haynes of the United Airlines Flight 232 could maneuver the plane without basically everything working except the thrust levers.

Choking on Thought
The chapter begins with the opera singer Renee Fleming and how her career went downhill. Likewise, Van de Velde, a golf pro, could not recover from the career slump because of their `thoughts'. There are numerous researches in this chapter along with the MRI machine that failed to treat back pain. The point of the chapter is that we can think too much because our brain is not designed to calculate, take into account, and make a decision of 10 choices with 20 factors each.

The Moral Mind
This is also one of my favourite chapters starting with John Wayne Gacy, a psychopath who murdered thirty-three boys. The crucial aspect is how he thought and decided to commit those `evil' (put your baddest word here) crimes without a wink. There are many researches including the one on war. There is also a very eye-opening story about `autism'.

The Brain Is An Argument
Within a decision, there are numerous parts of your brain working at the same time and you are likely to decide based on which part is winning be it choosing a political party candidate, shopping, or pundits. There is a story about decision-making failure during the 1973 war in the Middle East.

The Poker Hand
This chapter is mainly about Michael Binger, one of the world's best poker players and how he applied different tactics in each different round. The chapter ends with the simple guidelines (with explanations, of course)
SIMPLE PROBLEMS REQUIRE REASON
NOVEL PROBLEMS ALSO REQUIRE REASON
EMBRACE UNCERTAINTY
YOU KNOW MORE THAN YOU KNOW
THINK ABOUT THINKING

Coda
It's the conclusion with another great story

...
I'll compare "How We Decide" to an ideal business book in my personal opinion a book that is easy to understand, distinct, practical, reliable, insightful, and provides great reading experience.

Ease of Understanding: 9/10: From the briefing above, you will see that there are so many stories and they make it easy to understand the content and the way Jonah Lehrer wrote is a breath of fresh air. Each chapter has its core concept and the explanations are clear. The only confusion comes from the neuroscience. If you are not familiar with the brain parts, you might struggle a bit but that's minor.

Distinction: 6/10: What can I say? I have read some researches in the book from other books and this book is not the breakthrough of a major finding on neuroscience. However, this book is different in the aspect that it tells you why you did what you did and it tells you how should you do, which brings us to the next part.

Practicality: 9/10: When I first picked up "How We Decide", I did not have much hope in practicality but this book exceeds every expectation of mine. I might be biased but since I read the chapter on credit card, I really stopped using my credit card (except for online purchases) because the book told me what I thought and it was like a lightning struck on your head. The stories and researches will make you think of yourself and the world around you differently.

Credibility: 8/10: There is no need to not believe the book because of the tons of highly advanced scientific researches regarding the activity in your brain. Every explanation and analysis is written in plain language but scientific proofs are always there.

Insightful: 7/10: When I think of this book, I can think of so many stories (this is probably the book which has stories that I can recall most). I spent hours telling my friends about the stories in this book. There are lots of stories and lots of researches. Yes, it's pretty insightful.

Reading Experience: 10/10: I love the book. The book changes the way I spend and that alone is much great than the $25 price tag of the book. I changed the way I think of an unfortunate autistic person I know personally because in the past, I think of feeling and emotion for granted but this book says `don't, you don't have a clue'. Moreover, the book has (I said it for the millionth time) great stories that you will remember.

Overall: 8.2/10: I love the book. Bias? Possibly. "If you're going to take one idea away from this book, take this one: Whenever you make a decision, be aware of the kind of decision you are making and the kind of thought process it requires." And trust me that if you start from that idea, you'll get countless of invaluable ideas, for life.

Excellent introduction to the psychology of decision making
Lehrer is a superb science writer and this is an excellent non-technical introduction to the psychology of decision making. This is one of my favorite topics, so there was very little here that was new to me or particularly original other than Lehrer's smooth way of explaining the ideas and clever use of diverse examples.

I particularly like this book as a corrective to Gladwell's popular book "Blink" which introduces many of the same ideas but in a more biased way. The thing that makes this book so much better is that it doesn't use a cute spin to try to be original and provocative and socially relevant, he sticks to the science and as a result gets it closer to the truth I think.

Lehrer doesn't at all downplay emotions in decision making, "rapid cognition," and so on, in fact he demonstrates their power. He just makes the very important point that we should rely on our non-conscious decision making feelings in some situations more than others. The more experience we have accumulated in an area, the more we should go with our gut. The less experience we have in an area, the more we should use formal techniques to help structure and guide the decision process.

This isn't a magic bullet and it is probably fairly obvious to most people who have studied the subject and thought about it, so it won't catch on like the notion of the "miraculous power of the unconscious" periodically does, but it is very wise and well scientifically founded advice.

If you read lots of decision science book like I do, you don't need this one also, but if you are looking for your first book on decision science, this could well be one of your best choices. ... Read more

Editorial Review

From spooker poles and Perrier bottles to water bombs and cayenne pepper, Bill Adler, Jr., has tried every conceivable method to rid his backyard of these fluffy gluttonous rodents. Revised and even craftier than the first edition, which sold over 100,000 copies, this new revision contains humorous advice on keeping squirrels out of the flowerbeds and bird feeders. ... Read more

Reviews

A definite stocking-stuffer for any birding friends, November 11, 2001
There are some books that you just HAVE to have - if only because the topic they're on is so funny. This is one of those! Not only that, but it actually is handy for birders, in a practical way.

Whether you like or don't like squirrels, you have to account for them when you're trying to feed birds. Otherwise your birds end up with no food and you have many fat squirrels running around. This book gives you ways to handle this situation whether you mind the squirrels, or just want them to be in their own area.

It rates various feeders, complete with photos, showing you the drawbacks and benefits of each one. It talks about different kids of food, and different ways you can work with them to make them bird-only. It gives you ways to distract the squirrels. And it's REALLY funny!

A must-buy for any birder on your present list, and tuck one into your own stocking, too.

Excellent. Solid, practical advice with humor and style., March 3, 1999
We all love those furry little creatures but there comes a time when you must say "enough." With wit and humor, Bill Adler offers practical advice on how to keep squirrels from ruining your fun, hurting your lawn and gardens and taking food from the bird feeder. It's a must for anyone who owns a home.

Funny and Informative, February 26, 1999
I love both birds and squirrels. I don't mind feeding the squirrels, I just don't want them destroying my bird feeders. With the help of this book I was able to set up a bird feeding station that was safe from squirrels but also had a ground feeder just for them. It's a great book.

Extremely funny but helpful with practical ideas and advice, April 24, 1999
As I was standing at my double patio doors with my nose pressed to the window watching the squirrels raiding my bird feeders, I became so agitated I abruptly jerked the door open to scare them off and banged myself in the mouth with my door. I decided at that moment to wage war. Although I haven't won yet, the book offers good advice on how I can get revenge without doing bodily injury to the little monsters.

Inadvertantly increased my appreciation for squirrels, November 27, 2001
I really enjoyed this extremely humorous book. After reading it, any failure on any birder's part to get rid of his sleek, well-fed squirrels is understandable. They're great athletes, motivated and social to boot.

It is great stocking stuffer for your squirrel-obsessed birder spouse or friends!

For Determined Bird Watchers, June 8, 2005
This book is a guide to keeping your bird feeder squirrel-free. Adler had a particularly pestiferous squirrel who found ways around every squirrel-barrier Adler could think of to protect his bird seed. The squirrel's notorious feats put Adler on the war-path. In writing this book, he is not only fighting that one squirrel, but all of squirrel-kind. If readers pull-off a successful squirrel battle because of ideas in this book, then Adler can declare victory.

Bird watchers, (or would-be bird watchers) are the intended audience for this book, so the book begins with some suggestions about how to attract birds, along with a list of suggested foods to offer and descriptive profiles of birds who commonly come to North American feeders. Adler then turns his attentions to squirrels and provides a supposedly thorough description of squirrels, their biology, and behavior. Next, he describes and compares common bird feeders according to how squirrel-proof they are. Following this are a list of anti-squirrel devices that can be added to a feeder, and a list of combative actions a bird-viewer can take to ward off squirrels. Adler concludes with "101 Cunning Stratagems" (an attempt at humor?), ideas for squirrel lovers, ideas for dealing with problem cats at feeders, and a list of resources for bird-watching and squirrel-fighting equipment.

It's hard to tell whether this book was intended to be humorous, or what. Certainly, the comparison of bird feeders is far too serious to be funny. (And unfortunately, the feeders are listed by brand-name, rather than by some grouping according to general type or shape.) Some of the "101 Cunning Stratagems" seem intended to be funny, but fall short of the goal. Overall, the entire book reads as if it could have been a decent magazine article, but Adler had to really work to come up with ideas enough to stretch his material to fill out an entire book. For instance, he fills out his list of 101 stratagems with a number of patent descriptions, which are neither funny nor descriptive enough to give you an idea how the devices being described actually work.

Even though he seemed desperate to add to his work count, Adler still left out some key information. Namely, he provides almost no information about different types of squirrels, and how their approaches to feeders differ. Adler lives in a city, where he apparently only sees gray squirrels, which is probably why he barely mentions any other types of squirrels. In our experience, red squirrels are much more aggressive and agile than the grays-with our large population of red hoodlums, grays wouldn't stand a chance in our neighborhood. We also see flying squirrels at our feeder, but they don't bother us since they only come out at night when the birds aren't in the feeder, and they don't seem to gobble as much seed as the reds. They sure can jump, though. Then there are the black squirrels, which are the big gorillas of the squirrel world. I've seen them in Toronto, and I've also heard they haunt Washington, D.C. after escaping from the National Zoo. Do they also make pests of themselves at feeders? Adler leaves us in the dark about these critters.

Adler interviews world-renowned squirrel expert Vaun Flyger in the chapter on squirrel biology, and Flyger assures him that the best way to outwit a squirrel is to treat them like chicken; i.e., use them in any recipe that calls for chicken. In other words, Flyger advocates the "final solution". Adler doesn't consider this approach seriously in this book (but speaking from experience, it works, and better than any squirrel bafflers. Once neighborhood squirrels get the idea you're out for blood, they quickly learn how not to eat from your feeder).

Funny, good, and wise... what more do you want?, November 23, 1998
Hey, I like and feed the little rodents myself, but they're party crashers in the bird world. Our feeder says very clearly: "Bird Station." Furry rats need not apply.

This is not merely a good read but a funny book. Mr. Adler has scored five stars from me, even before I read about Rosie O'Donnell's rave.

Good fun for birdlovers., July 21, 1998
I must admit that I'm a bit nutty over brids, and I don't much like the squirrels pilfering expensive seed. This book gave me some good advice for keeping the tree rodents away from the feeder. And it is funny too. Any birdlover will appreciate this.

Not Remotely Tremendous, January 10, 2006
I'll keep this review short and sweet, since the book isn't exactly the utmost in literary achievement ever produced. The book is decent, probably right on the 3 star mark given what it tries to do and what it does. The intention of the book is to, well, outwit squirrels - a silly notion given a day or 2 observing the little...um, natural friends. Wit isn't what makes the squirrel dangerous. It's the endless effort a squirrel will go through to get your food. The overall effort described here should probably be called, "Outenduring Squirrels," since that's what you will need to do.

Overall, the book is hit or miss with the advice it gives. Living in a neighborhood with approximately more squirrels than blades of grass, you tend to either pick up ways to stop them from getting to your feeders, or you stop feeding the birds. Or as some have done, you throw in the towel and get used to having your seed receptacles ravaged by these tree rats. The advice in this book is sometimes right, and sometimes off the mark. That opinion is based on copious amounts of personal experience.

I got this as a gag gift from my father-in-law, since he knows how much I hate these animals. It was entertaining enough, though at times his sense of humor wasn't exactly what I would call top notch. Other times it was downright irritating. So it goes. I don't think squirrel banter is going to be on prime time television any time soon. Until then, you'll have to make do with books like this, which are good enough but hardly knocking on the door of your local bookstore's best seller list.

Serious approaches, humorously written, March 4, 2001
I wish I had known about this book two years ago. Mr. Adler provides insight into the single-minded focus of these furry creatures and their expensive impact on attempts to fill the backyard with a variety of colorful birds. Be sure to read the section on Nixalite. If only Bill Adler could be convinced to write a book on squirrels and their egregious misappropriation of the attic. ... Read more

Editorial Review

This tenth anniversary edition of America's bestselling bird calendar offers one sighting a day, in dazzling full color, of the jewel-like avian friends who alight in our yards and charm us with their plumage and song. A Marsh Wren clinging to a reed. Three plump Barn Swallows. A pair of Ruby-throated Hummingbirds hovering for a meal. Plus hundreds more. In addition to the daily photos, one species is spotlighted each month with a large photo and detailed text.
... Read more

Reviews

best wall calendar, December 10, 2010
We have used this calendar for years. The pictures are beautiful, and there is space to write in each day. It is the perfect calendar. Have bought the butterfly one this year too!

Song Birds Audubon Calendar, December 10, 2010
This is truly a beautiful calendar. Every moth a different bird is featured with interesting facts and every day has a small picture of different birds. The squares are large enough if you want to add appointments, etc. Amazon's price is the best... ... Read more

Editorial Review

Often imitated, never duplicated.

• New! Lay-flat binding makes coloring easier.
• New! 8 plates have been added: Accessory Structures of the Skin,Temporomandibular Joint, Upper Limb: Shoulder (Glenohumeral) Joint, Upper Limb:Elbow Joints, Lower Limb: Male and female Pelves, Lower Limb: Sacroiliac and Hip Joints, Lower Limb: Knee Joints, Somatic Visceral Receptors.
• New! 7 additional sections: Skeletal and Articular Systems, Skeletal Muscular System, Central Nervous System, Central Nervous System: Cavities and Coverings, Peripheral Nervous System, Autonomic Nervous System, Human Development.

Wynn Kapit is the designer of the The Anatomy Coloring Book, The Physiology Coloring Book, and The Geography Coloring Book. Mr. Kapit received a B.B.A. and an L.L.B. from the University of Miami and an M.A. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Lawrence M. Elson, Ph.D. is a clinical and forensic human anatomist who taught at the Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, the University of California Medical School at San Francisco, and the City College of San Francisco. Dr. Elson is the founder and president of Coloring Concepts, Inc., and the director of graphic and textual content of its several publications. ... Read more

Reviews

A Great Anatomy Aid -- A must for med students, June 29, 2000
This book is the best reference on the human body I've found! It focuses individually on each system, with large ready-to-color pages. This book list all bones and muscles in the human body (in the drawings, too) and reveals their locations. It goes into extreme detail about everything, and shows a fetal circulation diagram, which I have had trouble finding in other books. This book lists the view names (anterior, posterior, superior, ventral, etc.) and gives a diagram. It even spends some time talking about cells and tissues, with a colorable diagram of a cell. This book is a MUST for med students, and would make a great reference book for physicians. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in human anatomy, for I sure am enjoying it. Also check out "The Physiology Coloring Book, 2nd Edition". Note:For this book you should have a good supply of quality colored pencils, probably about 30, including gray and black.

Great supplement for any anatomy course, June 21, 2003
I am using this book as a study tool for my Gross Anatomy course. Anyone who has taken an anatomy class can tell you that color-coding structures is one of the most helpful ways to remember them. There are drawings of bones, muscles, joints, organ systems and explanations of virtually everything that could possibly be covered in an anatomy class. The drawings are excellent and most of the features of the bones are labelled as well. This was very helpful to me since I had to memorize virtually every tubercle, ridge, groove, or other protuberance on every bone of the body. When I had trouble with the skull because the drawings in my class notes were horrible, the drawings in this book were much clearer and helped out a lot. If you are taking an anatomy class, this is a smart and relatively inexpensive investment that will help you remember everything better.

The most learning enriched coloringbook you'll ever find!, October 13, 1999
I'm an 11th grader attending Norwich Free Academy currently taking AP anatomy & pysiology. This is one of those books, not required, but extrememely useful for surviving anatomy. With all the memorization, the coloring and written out labels w/ definitions, helps your out class grade so much. The visuals are so graphic and precise I find it has helped maintain a high gpa in the course. I would recommend this book for highschool & college anatomy students as well as for anatomy teachers. When the teachers print out the different coloring pages to assign for hw, as silly as it sounds, it infact helps w/ the whole physical concept. It is also a great break in between attempting Uconn Chemistry problems and reading about a bunch of dead guys in AP history. =P

A Must Have for Students of Anatomy, Massage, etc., September 8, 2001
Just when you thought they couldn't improve on the original, they keep making it better. The third edition contains all the strengths of the first two editions with dynamite new additions that will help all students of anatomy. Go down to your local hobby shop and buy the biggest set of felt tip pens you can find. After the book is colored, it should be kept as a quick reference book. You color the labels to match the illustrations, so it's easy to look back and spot the name of the muscle, bone, organ, etc. Make sure to read the section on HOW TO USE THIS BOOK before you begin coloring.

As the owner of a massage therapy school, we use this book and Salvo's Massage Therapy: Principles and Practice as our two main texts. It is incredible for those who are visual learners. We highly recommend it.

Great - Wonderful Learning Tool for Students, November 14, 1998
I am an undergrad Pre-Med student, and I found that working with this book was a valuable resource for helping me to learn the parts of the body that I need to know. This book is laid out very well, and in addition to the outlines of the structures, provides brief summaries of their functions. I don't really know why this book helps ingrain the anatomy in one's brain, but my whole class purchased this book and we have found it extraordinarily helpful!!!!!!!

Could it Get Any Better!, August 16, 2006
I am a doctor now, but i used this book when i was a medical student and i thought it was great.

Some people may say it does not have a lot of detail. But i thought the annotations were pretty detailed. And i had the 2nd Edition!

There is no way you can know all that is in this book and NOT get a good grade on your anatomy final!

The only down side, its a bit time consuming, all that colouring takes time. SO use it WITH your course work. Dont wait till you are close to exams, because you wont have time.

To tell you how much i loved this book, i bought a copy of the 3rd edition for a friend of mine who is starting med school in september!

BUY IT!!!!

An excellent tool for visual learners, October 21, 2002
This is a workbook I'd reccomend for any student of Anatomy. I make a point to get a new copy every three to four years and color through it just to review and stay fresh. I am studying massage Therapy now, and first used this book six years ago when I was thinking about going into massage therapy or physical therapy since I knew I would need this(if you're wondering why the long length of time, just getting money together for school).

The knowlegde of the muscles, thier attachemnts, origins, and actions have stayed fresh in my mind for years so that going through A&P was much easier for me than for my classmates. While the bones and muscles were my main interest, I aquired a good working knowledge of the rest of the body from this book along with my textbooks.

This book is great for anyone even thinking of a medical profession, or artists needing a better understanding of how the body is put together. I have known a few people this book didn't help, but this was because they were not visual learners, but this is great for anyone who learns visually.

Excellent adjunct for anatomy, August 17, 2001
The beauty of this book is that it's appropriate for all ages--it's detailed enough for a 1st year med student (especially for the summer before you start--it takes too long to color during the semester), and if you're a visual learner, you'll probably find it a better tool than just any old textbook. The text accompanying each picture is probably too much for a high school student, and maybe just enough for a med student, but it's a good starting point no matter what your level.

Jennifer, a nursing studern, August 10, 2001
This is a great book. Being that anatomy consists of being a visual learner, utilizing the guidelines in the book to color in the different aspects of anatomy is exteremely helpful. The diagrams are very detailed with excellent descriptions. I used colored pencils, they are a lot less messy and enable detail.

Best way to learn, April 13, 1999
I am a massage therapy student and this is the great way to learn all the insertions of each muscles. It even has general information about each muscle group. Coloring is not only fun, but this really does sink in. How else can you learn all the names? ... Read more