jenn_chem's review against another edition
challenging
informative
slow-paced
3.5
This was a hard book to get through. It’s extremely dense on the science topics. And while there are summaries and takeaways after each chapter, I feel like all I can take away from the book after 26 hours of listening is “it’s complicated“
rick2's review
5.0
Dense, sciency, and a bit difficult. But worth every effort.
The adolescent years for me weren't great. My family moved around a bit, I did debate, forensics, and I am a bit of a loner. I may not be the greatest wordsmith, but I am sure you get the picture. Bit lonely, mix in some bullying, some adhd and cook at 325 until done.
So when I discovered Green Day at 14 my world opened up. The experience of listening to an angry Billie Joe Armstrong was cathartic. I'd play American Idiot on a CD player while biking all over Milwaukee, with the CD skipping as I bounced on the pedals to go uphill, peddling my way to buy dirt schwag downtown. I can still recite probably a third of the album by heart. And while that album (and the subsequent cover band I was a part of) is important to the person I am today, It's key importance in my life was that it led me to Green Day's album Dookie. Green Day's album Dookie takes the cake when it comes to cornerstone musical set pieces to my adolescence.
Longview's funky bass and lyrics helped me understand my body and to not feel guilt for the changes that were going on. Welcome to Paradise, Burnout, When I Come Around, all these songs represent significant portions of my teenage years. I can still pinpoint key memories to each of those songs, despite having listened to them hundreds of times.
But the song Basket Case was another level, that song was just weird enough to titillate and entertain. To open up my world in novel ways. I remember the first time smoking a joint in a friends basement and listening to Basket Case. I felt like I finally understood the world. That I had found my small place in it. There was an afternoon where the world stood still and I chased that feeling for years.
I've come a long way since then. But I feel about this book at 26 the way that I felt about Green Day when I was 16, and would equate the experience of reading this book to the same sort of naughty mischievous pleasure smoking a joint to punk rock brings. It expands my mind in ways I can't quite pin down. Multiple times throughout this book, I had to put it down and just stare at the wall. To use the vernacular of my childhood, "Ah, wait, no way, you're kidding. He didn't just say what I think he did, did he?" Sapolsky goes through our brains and behaviors from our neurons, to our gluons, photons, and Dewgongs (that last one is a Pokemon folks, keep up) trying to pin down what it means to be human.
I think as a book, this one is bit disorganized. I'm not sure even an ambitious editor could machete their way into a cleaner book. I'm not sure if they could, they should. My biggest takeaway here is that the mind is a messy place, a labyrinth with many doors. We most likely know what some doors do. But sometimes we give ourselves the creeps. Sometimes the mind plays tricks on us. But in totality, we keep researching and it all keeps adding up. We go on with the pressures of existence, and while it can be hard to keep from cracking up. We persist. In this complex web of neurons and biochemical soup, the lines seem to blur and it can be hard to tell if one is paranoid or just stoned.
The adolescent years for me weren't great. My family moved around a bit, I did debate, forensics, and I am a bit of a loner. I may not be the greatest wordsmith, but I am sure you get the picture. Bit lonely, mix in some bullying, some adhd and cook at 325 until done.
So when I discovered Green Day at 14 my world opened up. The experience of listening to an angry Billie Joe Armstrong was cathartic. I'd play American Idiot on a CD player while biking all over Milwaukee, with the CD skipping as I bounced on the pedals to go uphill, peddling my way to buy dirt schwag downtown. I can still recite probably a third of the album by heart. And while that album (and the subsequent cover band I was a part of) is important to the person I am today, It's key importance in my life was that it led me to Green Day's album Dookie. Green Day's album Dookie takes the cake when it comes to cornerstone musical set pieces to my adolescence.
Longview's funky bass and lyrics helped me understand my body and to not feel guilt for the changes that were going on. Welcome to Paradise, Burnout, When I Come Around, all these songs represent significant portions of my teenage years. I can still pinpoint key memories to each of those songs, despite having listened to them hundreds of times.
But the song Basket Case was another level, that song was just weird enough to titillate and entertain. To open up my world in novel ways. I remember the first time smoking a joint in a friends basement and listening to Basket Case. I felt like I finally understood the world. That I had found my small place in it. There was an afternoon where the world stood still and I chased that feeling for years.
I've come a long way since then. But I feel about this book at 26 the way that I felt about Green Day when I was 16, and would equate the experience of reading this book to the same sort of naughty mischievous pleasure smoking a joint to punk rock brings. It expands my mind in ways I can't quite pin down. Multiple times throughout this book, I had to put it down and just stare at the wall. To use the vernacular of my childhood, "Ah, wait, no way, you're kidding. He didn't just say what I think he did, did he?" Sapolsky goes through our brains and behaviors from our neurons, to our gluons, photons, and Dewgongs (that last one is a Pokemon folks, keep up) trying to pin down what it means to be human.
I think as a book, this one is bit disorganized. I'm not sure even an ambitious editor could machete their way into a cleaner book. I'm not sure if they could, they should. My biggest takeaway here is that the mind is a messy place, a labyrinth with many doors. We most likely know what some doors do. But sometimes we give ourselves the creeps. Sometimes the mind plays tricks on us. But in totality, we keep researching and it all keeps adding up. We go on with the pressures of existence, and while it can be hard to keep from cracking up. We persist. In this complex web of neurons and biochemical soup, the lines seem to blur and it can be hard to tell if one is paranoid or just stoned.
dmturner's review against another edition
5.0
"If you had to boil this book down to a single phrase, it would be “It’s complicated.” Nothing seems to cause anything; instead everything just modulates something else." (674)
An exhaustive study of human behavior by a polymathic neuroscientist who studies baboons and teaches at Stanford, this massive undertaking talks about everything from brain structure and hormones to culture and philosophy, and could easily have been broken up into two or three separate books. Sapolsky is a very good writer (I loved A Primate's Memoir) and is also obviously a good teacher (I recommend the YouTube videos of his class), plus he is anything but arrogant.
He is meticulous about reminding us when he reintroduces a topic he talked about earlier, as well as about foreshadowing that a particular topic is going to reappear. He obligingly attaches appendices that provide basic information about things such as neurology for those who might be tackling a book of this type without knowing much. Of course, that's essential, since this book could be the curriculum for a multi-year college curriculum.
I have a few criticisms of the book. It may seem handy to use acronyms for the various brain structures, and I get it, but it's easier for me to remember "anterior cingulate cortex" than "ACC." Not that I can remember what the anterior cingulate cortex does even after having read the whole thing. I have to look it up every time (It's involved in empathy, impulse control, emotion, and decision-making) (I do, however, remember the amygdala and the insular cortex functions, because damn).
Another criticism is that while I love footnotes ordinarily, he would have done well to resist the urge to include so many of them in this book. I enjoyed reading them, and couldn't keep from looking at them, but it made reading the book a little bewildering and incredibly slow from time to time. He really couldn't resist shoving all the cool facts in, and yeah, they're cool, but I borrowed this book on Kindle from the library and had to renew it twice.
I also wish he had resisted the urge to tackle the philosophical problem of whether or not free will exists, though I guess he had to because if you are examining all the ways in which behavior is determined from synapses to cultures, you have to accept that the idea of free will is implicated. But his "homunculus" discussion either needed to be dealt with in more detail (oh, golly, another hundred pages) or in less, because he was wading into waters that are not only deep but turbulent, and the resulting chapter seemed dismissive, as well as being less grounded in research than even the chapter on religion.
That said, the book is worth wading through. If you buy the physical book, I recommend cutting it into chunks so that you don't get a backache from carrying it around. If you find that heretical, buy two copies.
An exhaustive study of human behavior by a polymathic neuroscientist who studies baboons and teaches at Stanford, this massive undertaking talks about everything from brain structure and hormones to culture and philosophy, and could easily have been broken up into two or three separate books. Sapolsky is a very good writer (I loved A Primate's Memoir) and is also obviously a good teacher (I recommend the YouTube videos of his class), plus he is anything but arrogant.
He is meticulous about reminding us when he reintroduces a topic he talked about earlier, as well as about foreshadowing that a particular topic is going to reappear. He obligingly attaches appendices that provide basic information about things such as neurology for those who might be tackling a book of this type without knowing much. Of course, that's essential, since this book could be the curriculum for a multi-year college curriculum.
I have a few criticisms of the book. It may seem handy to use acronyms for the various brain structures, and I get it, but it's easier for me to remember "anterior cingulate cortex" than "ACC." Not that I can remember what the anterior cingulate cortex does even after having read the whole thing. I have to look it up every time (It's involved in empathy, impulse control, emotion, and decision-making) (I do, however, remember the amygdala and the insular cortex functions, because damn).
Another criticism is that while I love footnotes ordinarily, he would have done well to resist the urge to include so many of them in this book. I enjoyed reading them, and couldn't keep from looking at them, but it made reading the book a little bewildering and incredibly slow from time to time. He really couldn't resist shoving all the cool facts in, and yeah, they're cool, but I borrowed this book on Kindle from the library and had to renew it twice.
I also wish he had resisted the urge to tackle the philosophical problem of whether or not free will exists, though I guess he had to because if you are examining all the ways in which behavior is determined from synapses to cultures, you have to accept that the idea of free will is implicated. But his "homunculus" discussion either needed to be dealt with in more detail (oh, golly, another hundred pages) or in less, because he was wading into waters that are not only deep but turbulent, and the resulting chapter seemed dismissive, as well as being less grounded in research than even the chapter on religion.
That said, the book is worth wading through. If you buy the physical book, I recommend cutting it into chunks so that you don't get a backache from carrying it around. If you find that heretical, buy two copies.
kjis's review
5.0
Absolutely brilliant writing and in my opinion one of the significant books of our times due to its comprehensivevess and density of insights.
Within the space of a couple of pages, the author can go from deep neuroendocrinology concepts to enlightening insights about human behaviour and sprinkle in some nerdy humour.
While I really don't believe that this book is intended as self-help litterature, the interested reader will surely pick up valuable information about what effectively is the hardware and software of their bodies.
I found the book thoroughly enjoyable to read.
Within the space of a couple of pages, the author can go from deep neuroendocrinology concepts to enlightening insights about human behaviour and sprinkle in some nerdy humour.
While I really don't believe that this book is intended as self-help litterature, the interested reader will surely pick up valuable information about what effectively is the hardware and software of their bodies.
I found the book thoroughly enjoyable to read.