Copyright ©2007-2008 Vicki Brown vlb@cfcl.com (everything I wrote)

© The Original Authors (everything I quote)

License: Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 2.5

Quote me as you like but please mention me when you do so.


Powered by: Movable Type 4.1

      RSS 2.0/XML

 

Saturday May 24, 2008

Kluge

Kluge: The Haphazard Construction of the Human Mind, by Gary Marcus. Houghton Mifflin Co; April 2008. ISBN-10: 0618879641

Taking us on a tour of the fundamental areas of human experience -- memory, belief, decision-making, language, and happiness -- Marcus reveals the myriad ways our minds fall short. He examines why people often vote against their own interests, why money can't buy happiness, why leaders often stick to bad decisions, and why a sentence like "people people left left" ties us in knots even though it's only four words long.

Marcus also offers surprisingly effective ways to outwit our inner kluge, for the betterment of ourselves and society. Throughout, he shows how only evolution -- haphazard and undirected -- could have produced the minds we humans have, while making a brilliant case for the power and usefulness of imperfection.

(from the product description on the cover flap)

Read:

Posted at 22:39 Pacific in Books | «e»