Reviews

Livewired: The Inside Story of the Ever-Changing Brain by David Eagleman

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acousticdefacto's review against another edition

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adventurous challenging informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

5.0

xadrya's review against another edition

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hopeful informative inspiring reflective medium-paced

2.5

Absolutely wonderful, brilliant, awesome, fascinating, lovely information--except, where David Eagleman took 400-odd pages to give it to us, a better writer could have done it in 20. The repetition is egregious. Yes, I understand that publisher's have demands, but bad writing for a reason is still bad writing.

carriehall1987's review against another edition

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4.0

Fascinating, exciting, hopeful, and enjoyable, this book is one of the best of its kind in its ability to present a forward-moving and well-paced book. Books by experts summarizing research they are presenting for the general population are rarely so informative and so fun to read.

kimmyp's review against another edition

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4.5

I thought this was really interesting and informative. I really liked learning about how the brain works. I just recently read An Immense World by Ed Yong and there was some interesting crossover with that work when he discussed the senses and how they work in the brain. Livewire being used as the terminology as opposed to hardwired. Where many animals brains come out full formed and the can start walking and interacting with the world right away. Their brains are hardwired through time to function the way they need them to, as opposed to a human baby where we are vulnerable for the first few years, but our brains are not fully formed and are influenced and adapt based on our environment and our experiences. This adaptability allows us so much more potential for learning and growth. Some of the parts with scientific terms were a bit beyond me, but the book was written in a way where I felt I could follow along with almost everything he was saying and understood the points he was making. I liked learning about how our brains are. I did not enjoy as much the parts where he suggested we use the brain and how it works to create devises and machines that work like the human brain. It got a little bit too dystopian for my preference, but I guess that’s science to dream about what’s possible. Even if I believe some of it should be left alone.