Book review: We Are Our Brains

28 Wednesday May 2014

Posted by sedeer in Books, Development, Humans, Mind

Tags

biology, book, book review, brain, mind, neuroscience, Popular science, science, Science communication

I have mixed feelings about We Are Our Brains. The author, Dick Swaab, is a professor of neurobiology at Amsterdam University with decades of research experience and many awards to his name, so the book is full of fascinating and intriguing information. Unfortunately, I felt like the delivery was somewhat lacking, leaving me with more questions and wanting more information. That’s not inherently a bad thing, but I feel like the book could have done a much better job of handling some of the inevitable questions and challenges it raises — it could benefit from engaging in dialogue with the reader rather than simply making assertions. Continue reading →

Book review: Raising My Rainbow

17 Tuesday Sep 2013

Posted by sedeer in Books, Humans, Mind

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

Barbie, book, book review, family, gender, Human, LGBTQ, Lori Duron, rainbow, sex, sexism

I discovered the blog Raising My Rainbow sometime last year and have been reading it (semi-)regularly ever since. Written by Lori Duron, it chronicles the ups and downs of raising CJ, a gender-creative little boy who “only likes girl stuff and wants to be treated like a girl”. The blog has been enormously popular and successful, leading Duron to write a book of the same name. Continue reading →

Book review: Constructing A Language

03 Saturday Mar 2012

Posted by sedeer in Books, Humans, Language, Mind

≈ 4 Comments

Tags

book review, constructionist, language, Language acquisition, language faculty, language organ, Linguistics, Michael Tomasello, Noam Chomsky, Social Sciences, Steven Pinker, universal grammar

This post is a bit of an exception.; I don’t generally plan to post book reviews, but I really enjoyed Michael Tomasello’s Constructing A Language and I’m hoping that this will be an informative post rather than just a review. It’s also a good opportunity for me to start writing about language, which is something I’d like to do even though it’s not my area of expertise. In addition to being a well-written book on its own merits, Constructing A Language really struck me because it successfully challenged what I thought I knew about language acquisition and made me reconsider my position, which is always a remarkable and rewarding experience. This book gave me the wonderful gift of educating me out of my complacent acceptance of an idea and forcing me to really think about it.