Born to Rebel : Birth Order, Family
Dynamics, and Creative Lives
by Frank
J. Sulloway
This
groundbreaking book takes on the influence of birth order in personalities and
offers some surprising conclusions. Frank J. Sulloway, a researcher at the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology, has undertaken the first comprehensive
study of birth order in determining personality and social outlook. He produces
overwhelming evidence that, because of the evolutionary hierarchy in families,
first-born children are more likely to be conformists while the later-borns tend
to be more creative and more likely to reject the status quo. He documents just
how different siblings are from each another--a person tends to have more in
common with any randomly chosen person of their own age than with a sibling--and
explains why sibling differences occur. The book offers new insights into the
determining factors of who we are and who our children will be, and it is unlike
any research yet published. --This text refers to the hardcover
edition of this title
The New York Times Book Review, Derek
Bickerton
... this book represents a stunning achievement. --This text refers to
the hardcover
edition of this title
Book Description
A New York Times Notable Book of the Year
"An important and valuable study that will define
research agendas for years to come. It is also hugely fun to read."--Boston
Globe
Why do people raised in the same families often differ
more dramatically in personality than those from different families? What made
Charles Darwin, Benjamin Franklin, and Voltaire uniquely suited to challenge the
conventional wisdom of their times? This pioneering inquiry into the
significance of birth order answers both these questions with a conceptual
boldness that has made critics compare it with the work of Freud and of Darwin
himself.
Frank J. Sulloway envisions families as ecosystems in
which siblings compete for parental favor by occupying specialized niches.
Combing through thousands of biographies in politics, science, and religion, he
demonstrates that firstborn children are more likely to identify with authority
whereas their younger siblings are predisposed to rise against it. Family
dynamics, Sulloway concludes, is a primary engine of historical change.
Elegantly written, masterfully researched, Born to Rebel is a grand achievement
that has galvanized historians and social scientists and will fascinate anyone
who has ever pondered the enigma of human character.
"Daring . . . a stunning achievement. "
--The New York Times Book Review
Synopsis
A pioneering theory of the significance of birth order assesses the impact
of family dynamics on personality and the human character, assessing the family
in terms of an ecosystem in which siblings compete for parental resources and
attention. Reprint. 75,000 first printing. Tour. NYT. "
Customers who bought
this book also bought:
The Origins of Virtue : Human Instincts
and the Evolution of Cooperation
by Matt
Ridley
Matt
Ridley puts it best: The Origins of Virtue "is about the
billion-year coagulation of our genes into cooperative teams, the million-year
coagulation of our ancestors into cooperative societies, and the thousand-year
coagulation of ideas about society and its origins." Past examinations of
human and beastly altruism have often led to some delightfully cynical
conclusions. To wit: children have to learn to be nice in order to get ahead;
adults are generous not out of good-heartedness but sheer self-interest; and
those male dolphins get along in order to have their way with the females.
Ridley does not discard such evidence so much as seek out instances of trust,
mutual aid, and generosity and examine them through a new paradox: "Our
minds have been built by selfish genes, but they have been built to be social,
trustworthy and cooperative." The Origins of Virtue is unsettling as
well as highly entertaining--its elegant style matching its strong substance. --This
text refers to the hardcover
edition of this title
Nature
and Ecology Editor's Recommended Book
Human life, scientific journalist Matt Ridley suggests, is a complex
balancing act: we behave with self-interest foremost in mind, but also in ways
that do not harm, and sometimes even benefit, others. This behavior, in a
strange way, makes us good. It also makes us unique in the animal world, where
self-interest is far more pronounced. "The essential virtuousness of human
beings is proved not by parallels in the animal kingdom, but by the very lack of
convincing animal parallels," Ridley writes. How we got to be so virtuous
over millions of years of evolution is the theme of this entertaining book of
popular science, which will be of interest to any student of human nature. --This
text refers to the hardcover
edition of this title
The New York Times Book Review, David
Papineau
If nice guys always finished last when our ancestors were scrabbling around
for food on the African savanna, why does morality come so naturally to us now?
This is the question Matt Ridley aims to answer in The
Origins of Virtue. Or, rather, he aims to provide a battery of answers. The
evolution of altruism has been a topic of intense research for more than 20
years. While the biologically minded may still be a minority among social
scientists, there are now enough of them to have produced a plethora of
competing theories. Mr. Ridley is a distinguished British science journalist who
proves an excellent guide to the current debate. Sometimes his eagerness to
cover every angle means that different views are not always clearly
distinguished, but he is never dull, and he illustrates the intricate logic of
natural selection with many parables from ethology, anthropology and games
theory. --This text refers to the hardcover
edition of this title
Synopsis
"Witty and lucid and brimming with provocative conjectures" (Wall
Street Journal), this fascinating and literate book interprets the latest
research in the emerging field of evolutionary psychology to answer an age-old
question: Is human nature cooperative or competitive? With vivid examples of
animal and human behavior, The Origins of Virtue examines why humans cooperate.
13 line drawings. --This text refers to the hardcover
edition of this title
Customers who bought
this book also bought:
Born That Way : Genes, Behavior,
Personality
by William
Wright
William
Wright takes on the question of nature versus nurture, examining the roles
heredity and environment play in determining not only what we look like, but why
some of us like coffee rather than tea or prefer cats to dogs. Wright's position
is clearly in favor of genetic control of our predispositions, based on
compelling evidence from various research such as the famous University of
Minnesota studies of identical twins raised separately and from newer work such
as that outlined in Dean Hamer's Living
with Our Genes. Wright states emphatically, "The nature-nurture war
is over." But he carefully avoids much of the outcry that met biologist E.O.
Wilson's introduction of the principles of sociobiology by stating up front that
genes aren't everything: "None of the data turned up by behavioral
geneticists shows genes to be tyrannical commands, but rather nudges, sometimes
strong, but more often weak."
Wright makes a strong case for genetic determinism, while
carefully distancing himself from the socio-political ramifications of saying
people are "born that way." He does this by showing how decades of
research pointing toward genes as determiners of body and mind has been
misinterpreted by groups or individuals intent on achieving their nonscientific
goals. --Therese Littleton
The New York Times Book Review, Derek Bickerton
Born That Way is a stimulating and highly readable introduction to
the nature-nurture debate. I particularly like the way Wright indicts Freud's
psychoanalysis, Boas's anthropology and Watson and Skinner's behaviorism as
co-conspirators in the suppression of genetically oriented research already well
established at the start of this century.
The Philadelphia Inquirer, Susan Miron
Much of the fun of reading Born That Way comes from watching the two
sides slug it out....
From Kirkus Reviews , May 1, 1998
An enthusiastic, informative account of the young field of behavioral
genetics that could use less of the reporter and more of the subject. Wright
(The Von Bulow Affair, 1983; Lillian Hellman, 1986; etc.) acknowledges himself a
nonscientist who ``roots'' for the growing view that human behavior is heavily
influenced by genes, as against the traditional social science perspective that
environment alone is responsible. Though this admission of journalistic bias is
refreshing, Wright overdoes it: His repeated attacks on ``genophobes'' begin to
sound bullying. To dismiss psychoanalysis by speaking of a ``Freudian-analytic
Anschluss'' is not only overstated but unkind, given that Freud was a refugee
from the actual Anschluss. Wright is better at expounding the thinking of
behavioral geneticists, particularly their complex view of the interaction of
environment and heredity, though his account of their research is lopsided. Most
of the book's first third is devoted to an engrossing, detailed account of
Thomas Bouchard's studies of reared-apart twins. The middle third too hurriedly
covers other top researcherssuch as Dean Hamer, whose recent Living with Our
Genes (p. 171) is less contentious and better at detailing specific
gene-behavior links. The last third gives a polemical account of the historical
shift from eugenics to environmentalism to behavioral genetics. Wright's
criticisms of intellectually dishonest ``antigene screeds'' are well taken, but
the constant jabbing takes up space that could have been filled with more data.
In a concluding chapter on the implications of gene-behavior links, he
unconvincingly theorizes that knowledge of these links can make people more
tolerant. Maybe, but also more patronizing: In a discussion of abortion, Wright
characterizes the pro-choice position as rational and high-minded, the pro-life
position as a benighted one driven by genes. The book leaves one wishing to hear
less from polemicists rooting for or against genes and more from scientists
striving to find out exactly what genes do. (Author tour) -- Copyright
©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Customers who bought
this book also bought:
Unto Others : The Evolution and
Psychology of Unselfish Behavior
by Elliott
Sober, David
Sloan Wilson
In
Unto Others, philosopher Elliott Sober and biologist David Sloan Wilson
bravely attempt to reconcile altruism, both evolutionary and psychological, with
the scientific discoveries that seem to portray nature as red in tooth and claw.
The first half of the book deals with the evolutionary objection to altruism.
For altruistic behavior to be produced by natural selection, it must be possible
for natural selection to act on groups--but conventional wisdom holds that group
selection was conclusively debunked by George Williams in Adaptation
and Natural Selection. Sober and Wilson nevertheless defend group
selection, instructively reviewing the arguments against it and citing important
work that relies on it. They then discuss group selection in human evolution,
testing their conclusions against the anthropological literature.
In the second half of the book, the question is whether
any desires are truly altruistic. Sober and Wilson painstakingly examine
psychological evidence and philosophical arguments for the existence of
altruism, ultimately concluding that neither psychology nor philosophy is likely
to decide the question. Fortunately, evolutionary biology comes to the rescue.
Sober and Wilson speculate that creatures with truly altruistic desires are
reproductively fitter than creatures without--altruists, in short, make better
parents than do egoists.
Rich in information and insight, Unto Others is a
book that will be seriously considered by biologists, philosophers,
anthropologists, and psychologists alike. The interested amateur may find it
difficult in places but worth the effort overall. --Glenn Branch
Synopsis
Philosopher Elliott Sober and biologist David Sloan Wilson demonstrate
indubitably that unselfish behavior is an important feature of both biological
and human nature. Their book provides a panoramic view of altruism throughout
the animal kingdom--from self-sacrificing parasites to insects that subsume
themselves in the super-organism of a colony to the human capacity for
selflessness.
In Unto Others philosopher Elliott Sober and biologist
David Sloan Wilson demonstrate once and for all that unselfish behavior is in
fact an important feature of both biological and human nature. Their book
provides a panoramic view of altruism throughout the animal kingdom - from
self-sacrificing parasites to insects that subsume themselves in the
superorganism of a colony to the human capacity for selflessness - even as it
explains the evolutionary sense of such behavior. Sober and Wilson offer a
detailed case study of scientific change as well as an indisputable argument for
group selection as a legitimate theory in evolutionary biology.
The publisher, Harvard University Press , September 3,
1998
“UNTO OTHERS is an important, original, and well-written book. It contains
the definitive contemporary statement on higher-level selection and the
evolutionary origin of cooperation.”
—E. O. Wilson
Customers who bought
this book also bought:
The Prehistory of the Mind : The
Cognitive Origins of Art, Religion and Science
by Steven
Mithen
Synopsis
Here is one of the first books to bring the insights of archaeology to bear
on some of the most fundamental and contentious issues in human evolution. On
the way to showing how the world of our ancient ancestors shaped our modern,
modular mind, Steven Mithen shares one provocative insight after another. He
offers an intriguing and challenging explanation of what it means to be human, a
bold new theory about the origin and nature of the mind. 50 illustrations.
Customers who bought
this book also bought:
Why Freud Was Wrong : Sin, Science and
Psychoanalysis
by Richard
Webster
From
Booklist
, September 15, 1995
This powerful, incisive rendering of Freud as a pseudo-scientist with a
compulsive need for fame is supported by extensive research. Evidence indicates
that Freud began his career by publishing a paper on cocaine therapy that
presented conclusions he knew to be false and dangerously misleading; that his
almost invariable diagnoses of hysteria for an endless assortment of complaints,
readily diagnosed today as symptoms of organic disease or trauma, had no
scientific validity; and that he could concoct sexual signification, no matter
how whimsical, for any symptom or dream. Patients who rejected such sexual
fabrications were "in denial," thus anticipating contemporary
allegations. Webster notes the resemblances of psychoanalytic doctrine to
religious beliefs in original sin and confession, and he likens Freud and his
disciples to a messianic cult wherein heterodoxy was not tolerated; heretics,
such as Adler and Jung, were expelled and ruthlessly attacked. Absorbing,
readable, and highly recommended. Brenda Grazis
Copyright© 1995, American Library Association. All rights reserved --This
text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
Customers who bought
this book also bought:
Freud : A Life for Our Time
by Peter
Gay
Michiko
Kakutani, New York Times
Intelligent and wholly absorbing. . . . [A] judicious, original biography,
scrupulously grounded in close readings of [Freud's] work. . . . For the lay
reader one of the virtues of this biography is Gay's lucid and succinct analysis
of Freud's essential texts.
Chicago Tribune
[This] remarkable biography . . . briskly traces the story of Freud's life
and education, deftly weaving the familiar narrative with a style that makes it
seem fresh and lively.
Jonathan Sharp, San Francisco Examiner-Chronicle
Brilliant. . . . A dazzling performance. . . . Gay's ability to integrate
into a coherent whole the vast published and unpublished literature on
Freud-including hundreds of previously unknown or inaccessible letters-is
awesome. . . . A work of art.
J. Anthony Lukas
A magisterial contribution to the history of ideas. A fresh, illuminating
perspective on one of the pivotal figures of our time.
The Shadow University: The Betrayal of
Liberty on America's Campuses
by Alan
Charles Kors, Harvey
A. Silverglate
At
first glance, this title is just another entry in the roster of books opposed to
political correctness at American universities, yet it's surprisingly
good--certainly the best of its type since Dinesh D'Souza's Illiberal
Education appeared in 1991. Kors and Silverglate are hard-core civil
libertarians turned off by the "hidden, systematic assault upon liberty,
individualism, dignity, due process, and equality before the law" that they
describe as rampant on campuses. Theirs is not so much a brief against academic
multiculturalism, but an eye-opening narrative about how the modern university
"hands students a moral agenda upon arrival, subjects them to mandatory
political reeducation, sends them to sensitivity training, submerges their
individuality in official group identity, intrudes upon private conscience,
treats them with scandalous inequality, and, when it chooses, suspends or expels
them." Through well-told stories and anecdotes (including an excellent
chapter-long sketch of the University of Pennsylvania's semi-famous "water
buffalo" incident), Kors and Silverglate make their case and make it well. --John
J. Miller
The Wall Street Journal, Daniel J. Silver
If parents value college not just as a degree mill but as a chance to improve
their children's minds, they should pay heed to this disturbing book.
From Booklist
, September 1, 1998
Even chemistry majors are learning politics at American universities these days.
But the type of politics they are learning does not impress Kors and
Silverglate, since it entails the establishment of a left-leaning political
orthodoxy and the systematic suppression of dissent. The authors document in
alarming detail the Orwellian techniques universities now use to enforce
conformity--vague and self-contradictory speech codes; secretive and arbitrary
disciplinary proceedings; ideological indoctrination billed as sensitivity
training; censorship of conservative publications and speakers. Besides shaking
readers out of their complacency, the tales of abuse lend urgency to their call
for renewed openness on college campuses. Only such openness, the authors warn,
can restore the First Amendment rights lost to students and professors under the
thumb of groupthink inquisitors. And because of the university's culture-shaping
power, all of society stands at risk unless such rights are restored.
Fortunately, the authors conclude their sobering diagnosis with a promising
prescription of practical policies for academics committed to safeguarding
campus liberties. So long as campus zealots wage war against independent
thought, librarians will see strong demand for this book. Bryce Christensen
Copyright© 1998, American Library Association. All rights reserved
From Kirkus Reviews , September 1, 1998
Two civil libertarians take up the cudgels against political correctness in
speech codes at American colleges and universities. Kors is a professor of
history at the University of Pennsylvania who represented a student - charged
with shouting the epithet - water buffalo - at members of a black sorority
having a rowdy party in a dormitory courtyard - in his intramural battle with
the university. And Silverglate is a civil liberties litigator and legal
columnist from Massachusetts. They take the egregious ``Water Buffalo Affair''
of 1993 as the jumping-off point for a wide-ranging, detailed, and legally
informed study of how universities and colleges supposedly ride roughshod over
First Amendment rights in the interest of curbing hate speech. Their study,
while often stimulating and revealing, undermines its own credibility with
hysterical rhetoric: ``Universities have become the enemy of a free society, and
it is time for the citizens of that society to recognize this scandal of
enormous proportions and hold these institutions to account.'' How did we come
to this desperate pass? ``Whole departments of the liberal arts have been given
to those for whom the universities represent, in their own minds, the
revolutionary agency of culture.'' Kors and Silverglate round up the usual
suspects, but the late Herbert Marcuse - icon of the 1960s New Left - comes in
for a special drubbing. With grudging admiration, they propose that his views on
the limiting of free speech paved the way for Richard Delgado, Charles R.
Lawrence III, Mari Matsuda, Catharine MacKinnon, and Stanley Fish, all of whom
wish to curtail free speech in the interest of race and gender equality. The
authors put academic freedom in historical perspective and offer illuminating
observations about double standards and about the universities' relationship to
the courts, but the exaggeratedly polemical posturing undermines the reader's
confidence in their objectivity. While in many ways a fine and learned study,
Kors and Silverglate's hellfire-and-brimstone sermon will likely be heeded only
by the saved. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights
reserved.
Customers who bought
this book also bought:
Our Babies, Ourselves : How Biology and
Culture Shape the Way We Parent
by Meredith
F. Small
How
we raise our children differs greatly from society to society, with many
cultures responding differently to such questions as how a parent should respond
to a crying child, how often a baby should be nursed, and at what age a child
should learn to sleep alone. Ethnopediatrics--the study of parents, children,
and child rearing across cultures--is the subject of anthropologist Meredith F.
Small's thorough and fascinating book Our Babies, Ourselves.
Small asserts that our ideas about how to raise our kids
are as much a result of our culture as our biology, and that, in fact, many of
the values we place on child-rearing practices are based in culture rather than
biology. Small writes, "Every act by parents, every goal that molds that
act, has a foundation in what is appropriate for that particular culture. In
this sense, no parenting style is 'right' and no style is 'wrong.' It is
appropriate or inappropriate only according to the culture." Our Babies,
Ourselves is a wonderful read for anyone interested in the social sciences,
and will be especially meaningful to those swept up in the wild adventure of
parenting. --Ericka Lutz
Book Description
"In the winter of 1995, in a dimly lit room in Atlanta, Georgia, I
witnessed a birth. Not the birth of a baby, but of a new science,
ethnopediatrics." Thus begins Meredith Small's new, groundbreaking book on
the study of parents and infants across cultures and the way different
caretaking styes affect the health, well-being, and survival of infants.
Pediatricians, child development researchers, and anthropologists today have
turned their research efforts to studying this new science of why we parent our
children the way we do.
Each culture, and often each family, offers advice and
directives on the right and wrong way to raise and care for infants, from
feeding, interaction, emotional support, sleeping, and more. Yet scientists are
finding that what we are taught is the right way to parent our children is based
on nothing more than cultural directives--and may even run directly counter to a
baby's biological needs. Should a child be encouraged to sleep alone from an
early age, as parents do here in the U.S.? Is breastfeeding better than
bottlefeeding, or is that just the myth of the '90s? How frequently should
children be nursed--or does it matter? Do children in all cultures develop
colic? How do mothers in different cultures respond to a crying baby? And how
important to our infants' ultimate development is it to talk, sing, and interact
with them? These are but a few of the questions Meredith Small, through the
research emerging from this new science, answers--and the answers are not only
surprising, but may even change the way that we think and go about raising our
children.
Written for general audiences and parents alike, Our
Babies, Ourselves shows what makes us bring up our kids the way we do--and
what is actually best for babies.
Card catalog description
"In the winter of 1995, in a dimly lit room in Atlanta, Georgia, I
witnessed a birth. Not the birth of a baby, but of a new science,
ethnopediatrics." Thus begins Dr. Meredith F. Small's new book on the study
of parents and infants across cultures and the way different caretaking styles
affect the health, well-being, and survival of infants. Each culture, and often
each family, offers advice and directives on the right and wrong way to raise
and care for infants, from feeding, interaction, and emotional support to
mandating what is normal in terms of infant sleeping, crying, and more. Yet
scientists are finding that what we are taught is the right way to parent our
children is often based on nothing more than cultural tradition - and may even
run counter to a baby's biological needs. Written for parents and science lovers
alike, Our Babies, Ourselves shows what makes us bring up our kids the way we
doand what is actually best for babies.
Customers who bought
this book also bought:
A
reader from Bel Air, MD , September 29, 1998
Clinton KO's Ken XXX Starr
This video tells us as much about Bill Clinton, who is the only person seen on
the screen, as about the persecutorial team headed by Ken Starr. The incessant
questioning solely on the sexual aspect makes a mockery of the constitutional
threshold for impeachment, “Bribery, Treason, and other High Crimes and
Misdemeanors”.
Mr. Clinton comes across as a very smart lawyer, able to
slice the language for nuances of meanings, of “is”, “alone”, ...(The
prosecutors themselves indulge in such semantics, asking as to what specific
acts were included or excluded in a definition, what the word “causes” is
understood as, ...). The impatience shown by the public in general, and the
Republicans in particular for such legalistic hair-splitting is not justified.
He is after all, defending himself from the attack of a team of lawyers, who
have virtually unlimited time and money at their disposal. He is not obliged to
offer them more than asked, and at times when he chooses not to answer a
question, considering it too personal and embarrassing, well, tough luck, Mr.
Eisenberg! You have the choice (I think) to give him total immunity, and then
compel him to answer! Of course, an ordinary citizen would have taken the fifth
for many of the questions, but that option is not viable for a political office
holder in general, more so for one who is occupying the highest office of the
land.
The quality of the video and audio left a lot to be
desired. It truly looked like a home-video, and at times, less polished than
that. I would have liked to see the faces of the prosecuting team, when they
were asking the highly (I am amazed how quickly this word entered casual
discourse!) “salacious” questions. It is said that in general, Ken Star’s
team were on better behaviour, cognizant of the video taping process. I would
hazard a guess that they would have been on even better behaviour, had the
camera turned towards them, when they were asking the questions.
Mr. Bittman comes across like an attack dog worthy of
James Carville’s approbation. His very first question is “Mr. President,
were you physically intimate with Monica Lewinsky?”. As a response, the
President read a statement, basically admitting to “involve inappropriate,
intimate contact”. This must have bowled over TheTeam, which promptly takes a
break, to discuss strategy. Their state of confusion shows up in the first
question after the break. Consider the following exchange:
Q: Mr. President, you statement indicates that your
contacts with Ms. Lewinsky did not involve any inappropriate intimate contact.
Mr. Bittman...
CLINTON: No, sir, indicates that it did, inappropriate
intimate contact.
Q: OK, it did involve inappropriate intimate contact.
So it goes. Remember these are high-priced, high-intensity
lawyers, zealots in their pursuit of Clinton for the past forty million dollars!
Considering the import of the case and the occasion,
TheTeam seems to be very ill-prepared with many things. There is many a time
where there is only one copy of a document. Why couldn’t they have come there
with enough for everybody there?
The tape should be viewed as a legal document, which it
is. There are many occurrences of repeated questioning on the same topic,
repeated, receiving repeated, almost identical answers. That’s the nature of
the beast. It would have been nice, if the tape were given to an editing house,
to be condensed to a 2-hour version, taking out such duplications, things said
purely “for the record” to satisfy legal obligations, ceremonial
introductions, (and things such as would you state your full name, did you take
an oath to tell the truth, ...), references to xxxxxxx
It is said that a prosecutor can get a grand jury to
indict a ham sandwich if he so wishes. Getting a conviction later, is entirely a
different story. Even if she is unsuccessful in that, the process severely
strains the finances of any but the very rich, so in a sense he wins even when
he loses! Mr. Bittman unintentionally reveals the fanatical zeal of TheTeam,
when he asks the question,
QUESTION: Well, we are interested -- I know from the
questions that we received from the grand jurors they are interested in knowing
what was going on in your mind when you were reading Grand Jury Exhibit 2 and
what you understood that definition to include.
One wonders if the question is really that of a grand jury
member, or his own.
The tape is must see for history, constitutional, legal
buffs. And properly edited (to about one-fourth its size), it would be good
viewing for the common folks too. I am sure such condensed versions would be
available in future. As it is, it beats the length of the boring movie, “Titanic”,
albeit managing it to be far more interesting.
Amazon.com
Here it is--the result of four years of investigative research, at an
approximate cost of $40 million. Back in 1994, Kenneth Starr was appointed to
investigate a series of investments made by Bill and Hillary Clinton; the Whitewater
allegations never bore fruit, but then somebody whispered stories about the
president and an intern named Monica Lewinsky into Starr's ear. He and his team
of prosecutors sniffed around, and this is what they've come up with:
"According to Ms. Lewinsky, she and the President had ten sexual
encounters, eight while she worked at the White House and two thereafter."
The details are bathetic in their precision: "during many of their sexual
encounters," Starr notes, "the President stood leaning against the
doorway of the bathroom across from the study, which, he told Ms. Lewinsky,
eased his sore back." And yes, as far as we know, that was the president's
semen on Monica's navy dress.
Whether or not it's the government's job to produce
hackneyed narratives about young women who find themselves falling in love with
powerful men is for voters to decide, but this story would be rejected outright
by readers of Harold Robbins or Jackie Susann were it not for the newsworthy
elements. Of course, there's also the second half of the report, in which Starr
explains how Clinton's attempts to prevent his relationship with Lewinsky from
becoming public knowledge constitute grounds for his impeachment. That's the
part of the document that matters most from a political perspective ... but it's
doubtful that it'll be the part that lingers in historical memory. (Note: You
can also read the Starr report in electronic form for free at a number of
locations on the Web, including the Library
of Congress site and the commercial sites AOL.com,
Netscape Netcenter, and Yahoo!)
The New Yorker, Adam Gopnik
...[The Starr Report] uses an obsessional voice to tell what is, in all
other ways, a relentlessly ordinary story of adultery. A supposedly
dispassionate account of a man's sins becomes so overwrought that the reader
gradually realizes that the point of the story is not that the hero is wicked
but that the narrator is mad.
Book Description
The Starr Report contains the complete text of the
Independent Counsel's report, the White House's response, and exclusive analysis
by the Pulitzer Prize-winning staff of the Washington Post. This historic
document, drawing on secret Grand Jury testimony of witnesses including Monica
Lewinsky, Linda Tripp, Vernon Jordan, many of the president's closest aides, and
President Clinton himself, provides the basis for Starr's allegations of
presidential high crimes and misdemeanors. It will become the central instrument
in the House of Representatives' investigation that could lead to President
Clinton's impeachment.
The culmination of one of the most controversial
investigations of our time, The Starr Report is essential reading for all
citizens concerned about the fate of the presidency and our nation.
Customers who bought
this book also bought:
Brave New Worlds : Staying Human in the
Genetic Future
Bryan
Appleyard
Amazon.com
Bryan Appleyard doesn't really have much new to say about the future of human
society in the face of genetic science advances, but he states his arguments
simply, precisely, and quickly. In fact, Appleyard's main purpose seems simply
to be a call for awareness. In a time where new discoveries about DNA and human
biochemistry come fast and furious, Appleyard preaches vigilance, lest we end up
with the genetic equivalent of the atom bomb--which is a perfect example, he
says, of what naive scientists will do when their knowledge is unchecked by
society. His main points are that scientific knowledge is not (and probably has
never been) morally neutral, despite the protestations of well-meaning advocates
of science; that new developments are not always good; that genetic screening
and abortion as currently practiced are eugenics; and that the practice
of eugenics, no matter how well disguised, will lead us to a future that looks
disturbingly like Aldous Huxley's Brave
New World. We must decide for ourselves what we want before science and
politics decide for us, says Appleyard. This short book is bound to anger
scientists, religious leaders, and people on both ends of the left-right
political spectrum--Appleyard no doubt hopes it will get people talking about
the "scientific juggernaut" of genetics. Brave New Worlds will
also give readers a quick, anxious overview of the state of genetics-research
policy in the wake of the first successful adult mammalian clone and the Human
Genome Project, and plenty of food for thought about what it is to be human. --Therese
Littleton
The New York Times Book Review, Leon R. Kass
The promise and the peril of the new genetic future is the subject of Brave
New Worlds.... The book's tone is earnest, its manner journalistic, its
style engaging if sometimes too breezy and its purposes plainly public-spirited:
to summon the human race to confront the profound challenges posed by the
dawning age of genetic knowledge and technology, and to convince us that genetic
science is too important to be left to scientists.
Synopsis
In this elegant stiletto of a book--a primer for reclaiming the knowledge and
power that is rightfully ours--Bryan Appleyard explores the promise and the
danger of genetic manipulation and forges a link between this scientific
juggernaut and its moral and ethical implications.
Customers who bought
this book also bought:
Unauthorized Freud : Doubters Confront a
Legend
Frederick
C. Crews (Preface)
Amazon.com
Frederick Crews became a well-known critic of Freud with his previous book The
Memory Wars. It was a brilliant piece of work: Crews not only knows his
stuff, he's a very angry man with a mind like a serrated razorblade. No
compromise position here: Freud is totally dishonest, according to Crews, and
his theories are a worthless sham--but the really bad news (as set forth in
Crews's analysis of the "recovered memory movement") is that to this
day Freud's legacy continues to inform a "therapeutic" tradition that
destroys people's lives.
Crews's own contributions to Unauthorized Freud, a
collection of essays and book excerpts, are a comedown: there is something
hectoring and almost desperate in his tone this time around. But he has
assembled impressive materials by heavyweight contributors such as philosopher
of science Adolf Grünbaum and famed MIT psychologist Frank Sulloway. Some
relatively new material is exposed here in a suitably unforgiving light,
including both Freud's appalling behavior in the "Dora" case and the
full implications of the long-suppressed Freud-Fliess correspondence. Not to be
missed is Italian philologist Sebastiano Timpanaro's polite slaughtering of the
concept of a Freudian slip.
Both Crews' titles are a must-read for anyone who thinks
it's obvious that Freud is one of the great men of the 20th century. It would be
interesting to see a Freudian offer a full response to this new book, but Crews
dispatched his earlier critics with such savagery (see his final essay in The
Memory Wars) that it's doubtful anyone will raise their egos above the
parapet. --Richard Farr
From Booklist
, July 19, 1998
At midcentury, Freud's standing as a seminal thinker seemed ensured but, over
the past 30 years, critics have challenged the man himself, elements of his
theory, even whether Freudian theory is a scientific theory or (as the
introduction cites medicine Nobelist Sir Peter Medawar as observing) "a
stupendous intellectual confidence trick." Crews, a University of
California, Berkeley, emeritus English professor, tends toward Medawar's view,
offered to readers in the form of essays and book excerpts from 17
scholars--including Frank Cioffi, Adolf Grunbaum, Ernest Gellner, and Stanley
Fish--which "take the full measure," his preface urges, "of
Freud's well-documented conceptual errors, relentless apriorism, disregard for
counterexamples, bullying investigative manner, shortcuts of reasoning,
rhetorical dodges, and all-around chronic untruthfulness." The essays Crews
collects challenge much of what he calls "the Freud legend," discuss
inadequacies of Freud's (shifting) methodologies in both scientific and
therapeutic terms, and consider the consequences of Freudian therapy's
"sense of militant exclusiveness." Mary Carroll
Copyright© 1998, American Library Association. All rights reserved
Synopsis
Was the father of psychoanalysis a fraud? As the Library of Congress prepares to
launch its Freud exhibit in the fall of 1998, critics mount a serious challenge
to his legacy.
Customers who bought
this book also bought:
The Emotional Brain : The Mysterious
Underpinnings of Emotional Life
Joseph
Ledoux
Amazon.com
Joseph LeDoux, a professor at the Center for Neural Science at New York
University, has written the most comprehensive examination to date of how
systems in the brain work in response to emotions, particularly fear. Among his
fascinating findings is the work of amygdala structure within the brain. The
amygdala mediates fear and other responses and actually processes information
more quickly than other parts of the brain, allowing a rapid response that can
save our lives before other parts of the brain have had a chance to react. He
also offers findings and theories on how the brain handles--and in many cases,
buries--extremely traumatic experiences. In all, a compelling read about the
mysteries of emotions and the workings of the brain. --This text refers to an
out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Booklist
, November 15, 1996
Researcher LeDoux offers this readable explanation of his work on the
neurological aspect of human emotion. He places his specific work on the fear
reflex within the history of emotion research, which began with psychologist
William James in the late 1800s. Later, LeDoux explains, cognitive science took
over as it searched the brain's anatomy for an emotion-producing region, which
it claimed to find in the "limbic" system. "Unfortunately,"
LeDoux writes, "the idea that the limbic system constitutes the emotional
brain is, for a variety of reasons, not acceptable." He then explains that,
as regards fear at least, emotion is an automatic, evolutionarily shaped
response to a stimulus. The awareness of feeling afraid, LeDoux argues, is
really the culmination of a complex of chemical and hormonal feedback loops
interacting with long-and short-term memory. Aided by numerous schematic
diagrams, readers get plenty to ponder in LeDoux's report from the cerebral
frontier; they might wonder if such emotions as love fit into the flood of
neurotransmitters. For active science libraries. Gilbert Taylor
Copyright© 1996, American Library Association. All rights reserved --This
text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Kirkus Reviews , September 15, 1996
A lucid, accessible explanation of what recent research on the brain has
revealed about the nature and origins of emotion. LeDoux, a researcher at New
York University's Center for Neural Science, has been studying the neurological
basis of emotions since the 1970s. He views emotions as biological functions of
the nervous system and believes that studying how emotions are represented in
the brain can lead to knowledge not possible through psychological
experimentation alone. He opens by recounting the work previously done by
cognitive scientists, pointing out its shortcomings with regard to emotional
process. Contrary to earlier theorists, he asserts that ``there is no such thing
as the `emotion' faculty and there is no single brain system dedicated to this
phantom function.'' Rather, there are numerous systems, each having evolved for
different functional purposes (from defense to procreation) and giving rise to
different kinds of emotions. Noting that each must be studied individually, the
author has concentrated on the basic emotion of fear and, through the study of
fear conditioning in rats, has mapped out in detail the brain mechanisms that
underlie fear reactions. To those skeptical about the relevance of such research
for human beings, LeDoux argues persuasively that these basic brain mechanisms
are essentially the same across species. Especially interesting are his
explanations of the different kinds of memory and his discussions of anxiety
disorders as functional disorders of the brain's fear system. LeDoux nearly
always succeeds in translating the technospeak of neuroscience into ordinary
English, but just in case, in the trickier sections he has provided line
drawings that help the general reader follow along with relative ease. After
reading this instructive and engaging book, those whose neurological vocabulary
stopped with ``gray matter'' will find themselves conversing confidently about
the amygdala, the hippocampus, and the cerebral cortex. -- Copyright ©1996,
Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out
of print or unavailable edition of this title
Customers who bought
this book also bought:
How the Mind Works
Steven
Pinker
Amazon.com
Why do fools fall in love? Why does a man's annual salary, on average, increase
$600 with each inch of his height? When a crack dealer guns down a rival, how is
he just like Alexander Hamilton, whose face is on the ten-dollar bill? How do
optical illusions function as windows on the human soul? Cheerful, cheeky,
occasionally outrageous MIT psychologist Steven Pinker answers all of the above
and more in his marvelously fun, awesomely informative survey of modern brain
science. Pinker argues that Darwin plus canny computer programs are the key to
understanding ourselves--but he also throws in apt references to Star Trek,
Star Wars, The Far Side, history, literature, W. C. Fields,
Mozart, Marilyn Monroe, surrealism, experimental psychology, and Moulay Ismail
the Bloodthirsty and his 888 children. If How the Mind Works were a rock
show, tickets would be scalped for $100. This book deserved its spot as Number
One on bestseller lists. It belongs on a short shelf alongside such classics as Darwin's
Dangerous Idea: Evolution and the Meanings of Life, by Daniel C.
Dennett, and The
Moral Animal: Why We Are the Way We Are: The New Science of Evolutionary
Psychology, by Robert Wright. Pinker's startling ideas pop out as
dramatically as those hidden pictures in a Magic
Eye 3D stereogram poster, which he also explains in brilliantly lucid
prose.
Customers who bought
this book also bought:
Consilience : The Unity of Knowledge
Edward
O. Wilson
Amazon.com
The biologist Edward O. Wilson is a rare scientist: having over a long career
made signal contributions to population genetics, evolutionary biology,
entomology, and ethology, he has also steeped himself in philosophy, the
humanities, and the social sciences. The result of his lifelong, wide-ranging
investigations is Consilience (the word means "a jumping
together," in this case of the many branches of human knowledge), a
wonderfully broad study that encourages scholars to bridge the many gaps that
yawn between and within the cultures of science and the arts. No such gaps
should exist, Wilson maintains, for the sciences, humanities, and arts have a
common goal: to give understanding a purpose, to lend to us all "a
conviction, far deeper than a mere working proposition, that the world is
orderly and can be explained by a small number of natural laws." In making
his synthetic argument, Wilson examines the ways (rightly and wrongly) in which
science is done, puzzles over the postmodernist debates now sweeping academia,
and proposes thought-provoking ideas about religion and human nature. He turns
to the great evolutionary biologists and the scholars of the Enlightenment for
case studies of science properly conducted, considers the life cycles of ants
and mountain lions, and presses, again and again, for rigor and vigor to be
brought to bear on our search for meaning. The time is right, he suggests, for
us to understand more fully that quest for knowledge, for "Homo sapiens,
the first truly free species, is about to decommission natural selection, the
force that made us.... Soon we must look deep within ourselves and decide what
we wish to become." Wilson's wisdom, eloquently expressed in the pages of
this grand and lively summing-up, will be of much help in that search.
Customers who bought
this book also bought:
The Human Nature Review © Ian
Pitchford and Robert M. Young - Last updated: 28 May, 2005 02:29 PM
