Title: The Social Animal: The Hidden Sources of Love, Character, and Achievement
Author: David Brooks
Genre: Nonfiction
Year: 2011
Acquired: Bought
Rating:

Summary: This is the story of how success happens, told through the lives of one composite American couple, Harold and Erica. Drawing on a wealth of current research from numerous disciplines, Brooks takes Harold and Erica from infancy to old age, illustrating a fundamental new understanding of human nature along the way: The unconscious mind, it turns out, is not a dark, vestigial place, but a creative one, where most of the brain’s work gets done. This is the realm where character is formed and where our most important life decisions are made—the natural habitat of The Social Animal. Brooks reveals the deeply social aspect of our minds and exposes the bias in modern culture that overemphasizes rationalism, individualism, and IQ. (Source)

Review: The Social Animal is a book that tries to figure out how and why success happens. David Brooks, a columnist for The New York Times, uses a wealth of current psychological research to build the lives of two composite characters, Harold and Erica, and explore why Americans do the things they do and think the way they think. (The structure of the book is inspired by Jean-Jacques Rousseau’s 1960 study of education, Emile, in which Rousseau invented a young boy named Emile and gave him a tutor in order to write about how human beings are educated).

Although Brooks writes that his first goal in writing the book was political — trying to understand why years of public policy have resulted in negligible improvements — he ends up writing a book that feels much broader than that, without feeling overwhelming or like it took on too much.

In many cases, Brooks cites studies that are relatively common fodder in books about the way we think. I think of the marshmallow experiment about delayed gratification or the study that showed expertise isn’t about IQ, but rather about forming better internal networks of information by testing the memory of chess grandmasters and chess novices. I’ve read references to those studies numerous times, but the way Brooks uses them in telling the story of Harold and Erica is novel and memorable. The studies meant more to me when I could see them in context of a lived experience (even an experience that was entirely fabricated).

Additionally, Brooks knows how to turn a phrase. Although some of the dialogue he invents for his composite characters is a little stilted, his writing on the whole is just lovely. Like this section, for example:

The truth is, starting even before we are born, we inherit a great river of knowledge, a great flow of patterns coming from many ages and many sources. The information that comes from deep in the evolutionary past, we call genetics. The information revealed thousands of years ago, we call religion. The information passed along from hundreds of years ago, we call culture. The information passed along from decades ago, we call family, and the information offered years, months, days, or hours ago, we call education and advice.

But it is all information, and it all flows from the dead through us and to the unborn. The brain is adapted to the river of knowledge and its many currents and tributaries, and it exists as a creature of that river the way a trout exists in a stream. Our thoughts are profoundly molded by this long historic flow, and none of us exists, self-made, in isolation from it.

But perhaps my favorite part of the book was that it was full to the brim with fascinating and shareable facts and quotes. I can’t tell you the number of times I looked up from the book to Boyfriend and said, “Hey! Did you know…” before reading a big chunk from the book. For example, did you know…

• “A person who is interrupted while performing a task takes 50 percent more time to complete it and makes 50 percent more errors. The brain doesn’t multitask well. It needs to get into a coherent flow, with one network of firings leading coherently to the next.”
• “Both reason and will are obviously important in making moral decision and exercising self-control. But neither of these character models along has proven very effective. … Most diets fail because the conscious forces of reason and will are simply not powerful enough to consistently subdue unconscious urges.”
• “The United States is a collective society that thinks it is an individualist one. If you ask American to describe their values, they will give you the most individualistic answers of any nation on the planet. Yet if you actually watch how Americans behave, you see they trust one another instinctively and form groups with alacrity.”
• “… You can only discover your vocation by doing it, and seeing if it feels right. There’s no substitute for the process of trying on different lives, and waiting to find one that fits.”

Honestly, you can probably tell a lot about where I’m at in my life based on the fact that those are some of the conclusions that I found most interesting… but whatever. I was absorbed by this book from beginning to end. Although the structure of the book is inspired by the past, it feels entirely novel. I can’t recommend this book highly enough.

Other Reviews:

If you have reviewed this book, please leave a link to the review in the comments and I will add your review to the main post. All I ask is for you to do the same to mine — thanks!

Title: Berlin 1961: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the Most Dangerous Place on Earth
Author: Frederick Kempe
Genre: Nonfiction
Year: 2011
Acquired: From the publisher as part of the Indie Lit Awards
Rating:

Summary (Source): In June 1961, Nikita Khrushchev called Berlin “the most dangerous place on earth.” He knew what he was talking about. Much has been written about the Cuban Missile Crisis a year later, but the Berlin Crisis of 1961 was more decisive in shaping the Cold War-and more perilous. It was in that hot summer that the Berlin Wall was constructed, which would divide the world for another twenty-eight years. Then two months later, and for the first time in history, American and Soviet fighting men and tanks stood arrayed against each other, only yards apart. One mistake, one nervous soldier, one overzealous commander-and the tripwire would be sprung for a war that could go nuclear in a heartbeat.

Review: Berlin 1961 is outside my normal nonfiction reading and, to be honest, if it hadn’t made the nonfiction short list for the Indie Lit Awards, I probably never would have read it. The Cold War and the Berlin Wall are both outside my political frame of reference — too recent to really have found their way into my history reading, but too far back for me to even remember. When the Berlin Wall fell in 1989, I was only three years old. The first major crisis-level event I remember clearly is the Oklahoma City Bombing in 1995, and the first event I understood the political repercussions for is the Sept. 11 attacks in 2001.

That’s not to say that I don’t know what the Cold War was about, just that I only know the most cursory details and probably don’t have enough background to assess the accuracy of Kempe’s major argument of the book, that the months leading up to the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1931 were the most fought and dangerous of the entire Cold War, and that President John F. Kennedy’s lack of leadership during that time was a direct cause of the Wall’s construction.

But as a novice history reader? I believed him. Kempe does a nice job offering evidence from a variety of sources and pulling together the stories of major players on all sides of the conflict. Kempe is not especially kind to Kennedy, but his criticism of the president’s performance in office seems warranted. Hindsight (and access to Soviet intelligence documents) gives him information Kennedy never had, but the book makes clear there were moments where history could have turned in an entirely different direction.

Another part of the book I liked a lot were brief stories about “the little people” who were impacted by the decisions made by the big players. These stories help show the human side of this story, and give some levity and sorrow during important moments. For as much as political posturing can seem theatrical, it’s always nice to be reminded that these decisions have very real human consequences.

I don’t think Berlin 1961 is the kind of book I’d recommend to novice nonfiction readers, or a book that I think would be fascinating for readers who previously had no interest in the Cold War or Berlin history. Other books on the nonfiction short list — Lost in Shangri-La or In the Garden of Beasts — fit that general recommendation a lot better. But for history buffs or readers curious to learn a new and possibly controversial assessment of early Cold War policies, Berlin 1961 has a lot to offer.

Other Reviews:

If you have reviewed this book, please leave a link to the review in the comments and I will add your review to the main post. All I ask is for you to do the same to mine — thanks!

After months of reading, debate, and discussion, the winners of this year’s Indie Lit Awards have been announced. I’ll be posting my reviews of the shortlisted titles this week!

Title: Physics of the Future: How Science Will Shape Human Destiny and Our Daily Lives by the Year 2100
Author: Michio Kaku
Genre: Nonfiction
Year: 2011
Acquired: Library
Rating:

Review: By the year 2100, we’ll be able to control computers with our minds, cars will be able to drive themselves, DNA sensors and microparticles will scan our bodies for signs of an illness and we’ll be able to take an elevator to space. At least, that’s the world that Michio Kaku imagines in his book Physics of the Future.

Physics of the Future is a look at the future based on the work and predictions of scientists who are actually doing the work that is going to change how the world looks in 100 years. In that way, the book is deeply fascinating. However, I was disappointed is how many moments felt like they only scratched the surface of what seemed like the most interesting details about how science is going to fundamentally change the way we live.

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Happy Sunday! I’m writing this post on my tablet, so I apologize for typos. I am not very good at typing on the on-screen keyboard yet, but I don’t feel lime turning on my computer yet today. I know, #firstworldproblems.

Anyway, I had a pretty slow reading week this week, mostly because work was crazy busy and I just couldn’t find the energy to read when I got home in the evening. I also didn’t get any reading or blogging done last weekend because I was home in the Twin Cities hanging out with my sister who was home on spring break. But late in the week, I finally managed to settle down a bit and finished both The Reconstructionist by Nick Arvin and House of Stone by Anthony Shadid.

The weather this week was gorgeous, especially for March in Minnesota, so I got to read outside, which was amazing. All the birds outside the window have made Hannah a bit nutty too. We’ve all got spring fever around here, it appears.

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