Becca
I don't really understand how Neal Stephenson is a bestselling New York Times author. Is there really that large of an audience for a 900+ page book that sandwiches a narrative of Greek philosophy, quantum mechanics and astronomy with a time line at the beginning and an ending of 50 pages of glossary and mathematical problems?
That's not to say I didn't like Anathem, although, having said that, in large part I liked it because I had the time to memorize entries from the glossary (you grow out of needing it around page 400 or so), to look up quantum mechanics, google philosophers and work out a proof of the Pythagorean theorem. This is a book to be read on vacation.
I loved Anathem. It's one of the few books that really begins on a small scale and then gradually scales up to epic scale problems, while entertaining the reader along the way. Similarly, it is one of the few books in which the author tries to posit scientific and philosophic hypotheses while still remaining an entertaining work of fiction and without becoming preachy or (unlike many of Stephenson's other works) an unreadable information dump. His science is entertaining and while it is bettered by outside knowledge, he explains his points in such detail that outside knowledge is not necessary. Stephenson is respectful of quantum mechanics, in contrast to myriad “science” fiction novels that throw around Everett and quantum mechanics as excuses for all manner of convenient magic.
That's not to say that I had no complaints: whole sections of the book drag, particularly because they seem to be rehashing what the reader already has either been told explicitly or intuited and many plans made by characters seem to ultimately go nowhere. More grievous is the closing arc, which has an unfinished feel. After 850 pages of having every action described to the minute detail, the last few pages feel like they're in outline form. Time jumps, plots are dropped, key points are ultimately only intimated and never explained outright. All of these are fine narrative devices but are in stark contrast to the rest of the book and therefore feel unfinished.
Reading The No. 1 Ladies Detective Agency, my overwhelming feeling was how very Holmesian the book felt. Each chapter dealt with a different mystery (excepting the earliest chapters, which instead were Precious' back story.) However, the whole book was in chronological order and themes and techniques that occurred earlier would recur in later stories – very evocative of Doyle's classic mystery works.
So the layout, was an initial draw for me. What kept me reading was the theme; most of the mysteries in this installation revolve around the relationships between women and men – dating, affairs, familial relationships, etc. McCall Smith paints Precious as somewhat of a feminist (a “modern woman”), while contrasting her with the mores of the more traditional people in her town. At times, I felt that the narrative swung the other way – depicting men as scoundrels and cheaters, which I felt was unnecessary.
Much has been made of McCall Smith's portrayal of Botswana, and this is where the book truly shines. I had no small amount of trepidation about reading a book with an African female protaganist written by a white man, but it turned out to be unfounded. McCall Smith depicts Botswana aptly, with no hint of Orientalism. It is clear from the outset that McCall Smith loves Subsaharan Africa, and his portrayal of such is fair, not veering into noble savages on one extreme, or war-torn, abject poverty on the other. In addition, McCall Smith takes care to show the reader Botswana itself, with the politics and history, rather than a generic “Africa” setting. This delicacy and honesty is what truly promotes the book from a three star rating to a four.
Peninah Schram is one of the great Jewish storytellers of our time. These stories range from traditional to original and are based in every Jewish culture. It's intended for family use, with suggestions for holiday celebration and an appendix with music to sing-along to. The main flaw with this is that, despite the large book layout, this is really more of a chapter book inside. The stories are long (for probably an 8 or 9 year old to read by themselves, or to be read to a patient 5 or 6 year old) and unillustrated.
Medical memoirs are my version of brain candy and being weeks away from earning my own M.D. from Dr. Firlik's alma mater, I thought this would be an apropos read. Unfortunately, I don't think I'm part of Dr. Firlik's intended audience. Granted most medical memoirs are written for the layperson, but being some what of a connoisseur of the genre, I can tell you that some are more interesting to those of us who have done are own time in the neurosurgical OR and some of them are less so.
All of this is not to say that I didn't find Dr. Firlik's book entertaining. It certainly was, and in particular Dr. Firlik has inherited a gift of storytelling – her patient encounters are touching, detailed and never judgmental. This is clearly the strong point of the book.
The weaker parts of the book are that, while she is clearly trying to be, Dr. Firlik herself admits that she is no Dr. Sacks. She alludes to him frequently, but just as frequently apologizes for the lack of deep thought on the brain/mind dichotomy that she is interested in, explaining that as a neurosurgeon, her first commitment is to the operating room. Her honesty is appreciated, and at points it seems that she is doing herself a disservice, for she is a very introspective person. But at the end of the day, she's correct – she sees interesting questions that arise from her profession, but has not explored them in depth. At no point is this more clear than the very weak closing two chapters, particularly the last chapter regarding the future of neurosurgery.
This chapter is rushed and wandering. It contains too many ideas for one chapter, ranging from neuro-enhancements to minimally invasive surgeries to a discussion of turf-wars that may, in fact, be too entrenched in medical politics to be comprehensible to the lay audience. Dr. Firlik should play to her strengths – the ability to recount the daily life of a neurosurgeon and leave further exploration of the questions she raises on consciousness, the mind and neurological enhancements to the reader.
This is probably one of the most depressing books I've ever read. Although Steinberg seems to have no particular mission for this work, it is truly an expose in the arbitrary decisions that are made by college admissions committees.
Perhaps the saddest part is the coda, wherein two students who were accepted despite mediocre grades and SAT scores were unable to handle the academic work and had to take time off from college, whereas two students who were rejected despite great SAT scores soared at their back up schools. It really highlights how unfair the process has been to both sets of students.
I'll admit that I was emotionally invested from the beginning. Like Jordan in the book, I had dream grades, SAT scores, AP classes & the works. Like Jordan, everyone assured me that I would get into Brown...and I didn't. So, like Jordan, I want to a mid-tier liberal arts college that was anxious to snap up the Ivy League's remnants (although unlike Jordan, I was savvy enough to choose one that gave me a substantial merit scholarship). Unlike Jordan, I never got over Brown, and deeply resent the four years I spent with coursework that failed to challenge me, and classmates who were not my intellectual equals. (For others in the same boat, take heart: despite going to a mid-rung college, I managed to get into a top-tier medical school, and thereafter a top-tier residency. Work hard and make the best of it; the rest of the world is not as fickle as undergrad admissions.)
Overall, this was an extremely provocative collection of short-stories. The underlying theme is the goals and dreams that we set for ourselves and how we can be both confined and freed by them. The way that Morris plays with dreams – both too lofty and not lofty enough – being captors of the dreamer was a unique take to me, and one I found very compelling.
Many of the stories share features in common aside from the theme: a male, disaffected main character with a distant relationship with his wife and/or kids, a fugue of some sort and occasionally surreal elements. In my opinion, where Morris really soars is his most mundane stories. My favorite in the collection, Camel Light, is merely about a man finding a cigarette in his kitchen. But Morris' honest take on the thought process and the minute ways we fail ourselves was so poignant and truthful. The most surreal stories are also excellent – some, such as Tired Heart and Cyclist, which start out mundane, but slide increasingly into surrealism are captivating and the theme shines in them. Rockier are some of the stories in the middle, both physically in the middle of the book and in the middle such that they are neither truly realistic, in the most mundane sense, nor fantastical.
By far, the majority of the stories are readable, an interesting and novel take on the theme of dreams and goals and beautifully written.
Shilts' contemporary account of the advent of what is now HIV/AIDS is truly a classic. Shilts takes an unbiased, journalistic approach to the science surrounding the discovery of the “GRID” complex, the underlying virus, the epidemiology required to figure out how the disease was spread as well as the international politics limiting the closing of the bathhouses, treatment, testing of the blood supply and delaying the correct taxonomy of HIV.
Interspersed with this, Shilts shows the ready a very personal view of the stories of individuals affected by HIV/AIDS and their personal struggles both as patients and as advocates. These interspersed narratives are touching and strong, and completely unfictionalized.
Although it would be easy for these one of the many different components of the narrative to become overwhelmed by the vastness and intricacy of the story that Shilts is telling, he handles each of these components deftly, making the 600 page book a manageable and entertaining read.
Although And the Band Played On is now over 20 years old, it was the first comprehensive account of the advent of HIV/AIDS, it was an instant classic in its time and its contemporary nature lends an honesty to the homophobia, politicking and counter-productive maneuvering on all sides that would likely be glossed over in a modern telling.
By far the Keys to the Demon Prison is the strongest book in the Fablehaven series. In it, Mull corrects many of his earlier mistakes, by creating nuanced and interesting characters on all sides. He highlights shifting alliances and the difficulties arising from allying with those currently convenient. Of particular note is the comparison that Mull draws between Seth and the Sphinx in the early part of the book.
The plot is also entertaining, with even more creative settings and creatures. Some of the flaws that plagued the early books, such as villain monologuing, plot that turns out to be largely unnecessary, and repetition of exposition to each character in turn, are still present in Keys to the Demon Prison, but in attenuated form. Mull also tries to actually highlight the strengths and weaknesses of each character, rather than play on gender norms as was the case in early books.
I expected the book to come as billed: “An intricately intertwined set of narratives hiding a shocking family mystery.” Instead it was
1. Snippets of an interesting science fiction story, told by unknown lovers, padded with
2. An excruciating story of two young, insipid, girls and their coming of age. The beginning of the lives of the girls was interesting to develop setting and character, and their adulthood (the end of the time described in this part) was predictable, but at least relevant. However, for the middle 300 pages, this becomes an interminably long day-by-day description of everything that they ate and wore. In addition, because these girls are so completely insipid we are treated to the details of how they hate absolutely everything and aspire to nothing, which is a little less than endearing. However, this is still not the most insufferable of the three parts, because the remainder of the book is
3. The nominal framing device. Less a story on its own and more to remind us how “clever” Atwood is in her prose style, this framing device seems to consist of determining how many ways the narrator can find to remind us that she's old and her heart bothers her. She goes to eat donuts. She reads the graffiti on bathroom stalls. She has chest pain, a lot. She tries to do her laundry. Rinse, lather, repeat.
Even without much in the way of plot (that which there is having been telegraphed 300 pages in advance), this book could have had literary merit if the characters had been at all interesting. But instead Laura and Iris are the most frustrating characters known to my literary world. For example, Iris complains bitterly about getting married away to a rich man, for which one may have sympathy, had she not spent the proceeding 100 pages explaining how she wanted to be rich and she expected to marry money to get there. Laura is flighty and “spiritual,” and disobedient, in such ways as to be maximally irritating but accomplish nothing. However, if Laura ever directly told anyone anything there wouldn't really be a book, so there is that.
The other most frustrating part of this book is the “unknown lovers” framing device for the Blind Assassin story. It is obvious to the reader who the unknown lovers are; however the characterization in this segment is so drastically different from that of the others (in that the female protagonist of this section, unlike every other female character in this book, has opinions, expresses them and acts on her will.) It is unclear whether this is done in a futile attempt to obscure the identity of the unknown lovers, or because the story is being told by an unreliable narrator (which makes little sense, given the final identity.)
Addendum, 12/11 - having finished Oryx & Crake it feels nothing short of criminal that Margaret Atwood spent time writing this book when she is clearly capable of so much more.
A relatively succinct, yet comprehensive history of lesbian women in America, which also touches on feminism, civil rights and relations between the gay and lesbian communities. As far as I am aware this is the most comprehensive work on lesbian history available. Faderman did extensive research and the book is rife with footnotes and comprised predominately of interviews conducted for this book.
Faderman is upfront about her biases, although her disbelief in “congenitalism” may make modern readers uncomfortable. She does seem to view the 80's as a terminal point in lesbian history, and it would be interesting to see her characterize the 90's and 00's.
[b:I Do Not Come to You by Chance 6265288 I Do Not Come to You by Chance Adaobi Tricia Nwaubani http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1236695900s/6265288.jpg 6448541] is fascinating from the stand point of the setting. As a novice on Nigerian culture & history, I found Nwaubani's loving and honest depiction fascinating. Kingsley's struggle as the opara of his family, who is therefore obligated to provide for his younger siblings and ailing mother, but who doesn't have the “long-leg” to get a job using his degree is both manifestly Nigerian and understandable to anyone who has loved academia. Nwaubani takes care to paint the “419 scams” as both necessary and repulsive, successfully depicting a morally ambiguous area.However, the book falls flat of the mark when it comes to pacing. The plot, such as it is, goes little further than the back of the book and somehow stretches across 400 pages. Character development is fleeting (the only development I noticed was when Kingsley finally realized that he had been either doing what his father said or what Cash Daddy said his whole life, which he realized almost word-for-word as I have typed and then did not reflect on that or change his behavior at all.) The setting alone was not enough to hold my interest; a huge part of the appeal of the book for me was hoping to see change & when I realized none was forthcoming, I finished the last 100 pages at a run mostly to get it finished.
The first thing I noticed about this book was how beautiful it was. But it is a truly gorgeous book – matte spring green cover, a women in mosiacs, and it smelled exactly like a treasured, well-made & well-loved book does. The matte cover is a pleasure to hold and touch.
Yes, it's amazingly petty, but the multisensory experience was apropos for a book that is so immersive. Watrous' detailed characters, evocative prose & well-researched setting left the mark of a truly good book – when my reading was interrupted, I would look up stunned to find myself not in Japan. Characters are certainly a highlight of the book – memorable, but not caricatures.
Watrous denies that it is a memoir, but it clearly draws from autobiographical influences, from the physical description of Marina to her name (Marina v. Malena) and the location & occupation in Japan. In the P.S. interviews included in this copy, Watrous states that this If You Follow Me is not the story of her life, because lives do not have plots. Honestly, that's not much of an argument; If You Follow Me has little in the way of traditional plot, although it does have narrative arcs. Instead, the novel is comprised predominately of linked incidents. This adds to the charm & uniqueness of the novel. The lack of cookie cutter rising action, climax, falling action, or even central plot is what helps If You Follow Me be so atmospheric. Marina's embarrassment is palpable because the reader knows what it's like to be so acutely embarrassed and unable to get over it, despite knowing that it will pass. The narrative arcs keep it from feeling like just a “day in the life,” and add a sense of completion at the end of the novel. The combination of the two techniques is a terrific blend.
Language is clearly another strength of Watrous – the English, both broken and fluent, is clever. Watrous uses her characters who do not speak English fluently as an excuse to invite phrases and use words in novel ways. She uses Japanese to express constructs not possible in English.
I was hoping for a fun romp through the crazy fad diets of the last several hundred years. This exists for the first couple of chapters, but it really quite short on each diet. Nevertheless, this part is pretty interesting and a good discussion of dieting culture: “most Americans truly had no clue how to eat anymore”
And then, a rant about obesity in America, with no reference to the fact that it could be related to that one, extremely insightful quote. Or to the fact that yoyo dieting leaves most people heavier than they started, which Yager even discusses, but does not in anyway connect to her hundred page rant about obesity. (By the way, in case you're living on the moon, obesity is a problem in America, and this is somehow thought to be novel enough to be worth several chapters.)
And then I got even more frustrated as the last three chapters where Yager is completely credulous about organic food and says crazy stuff like organic food is inherently healthier, eating organic will make Americans more conscious about their food choices and that modern Americans don't diet anymore and that the obesity problem is going to be solved as Americans choose to eat organic. Seriously, talk about living on the moon, or at least in her non-food desert, upper middle class, Whole Foods-going bubble.
And then she hit a nerve when she tied in the hemolytic uremic syndrome outbreak of 2009 into “Americans not being aware enough of food” and being too willing to buy “cheap food.” I personally took care of several patients during the outbreak and to blame their illness on their (smart, caring, insightful and upper-middle class) parents who apparently are at fault for buying hamburger meat really rankled.
I'm still not quite sure how I feel about this book & the ending. It was very strange and very unexpected. Overall, a lot of the characterizations that were being built up were never really explained. There weren't any actual loose end; however, the conclusion felt pretty unsatisfying.
In any event, The Keys to the Kingdom books stand alone very poorly; by the seventh book every character, item and place has significance from earlier on in the book and there is no summarization of previous events. I would recommend re-reading the entire series before starting this.
Fascinating. Goodreads says that I read this ten years ago, which I don't remember at all. I guess that says something about the impression it left on me. I hate reviewing old fantasy, because I feel guilty saying that this has been done one hundred times before and better, knowing that Obernewtyn may well have been one of the first instantiations. Nonetheless, there is nothing original for the modern reader - society got too advanced, set off a nuclear weapon, destroyed society back to medieval times; some people were mutated and therefore have magic (every bone in my geneticist body is twitching to point out how very unrealistic this is in several ways, but I'll defer); one girl is The Special-ist and she Will Save the World with the help of her Magic Cat and the Ruggedly Handsome and Terse, but Ultimately Loving Love Interest. Along the way, we will be “surprised” to know that civilization was destroyed by itself and the nuclear war. Her friends, of course, involve the Boy Who is Super Magic to compensate for his Blindness and The Boy Who Mopes after his Dead Girlfriend, the Very Delicate sacrificial lamb. Sorry, if I want a post-apocalyptic fantasy world with strong, yet loving female characters and brusque but lovable male love interests, I'll go back to reading [a:Sharon Shinn 28544 Sharon Shinn http://photo.goodreads.com/authors/1218995575p2/28544.jpg]
I was concerned about two possible outcomes when I first read the cover flap to How to Buy a Love of Reading: the first that the book would be overwrought with literary devices, self-referential and self-deferential – obsessed with its own cleverness, the second that as a “young adult” book, the writing would be so simplistic, so easy to read, that it would not be worth my time.
Gibson walks a narrow line without ever venturing into either extreme in this novel, which is filled with a rich and moving narrative, well-depicted and sympathetic characters and metafictional devices, theme, tone and point-of-view. It is not only the sort of book that one can read many times to find out what it is “really about” (and certainly, because it is the sort of book that makes one hark back to their own exposure to the concept of literature as more than narrative, I was tempted midway through to sit down and write a 5 paragraph essay about the Dark Journey and Coming of Age imagery.) but also the sort of book wherein “stuff happens” and the reader cares about what will happen.
The writing is elegant, readable, funny and terribly, terribly sad. It is easy to identify with parts of each of the (many) characters, while despising others. Ultimately, it is a book about narrative, as each of the main characters has a different struggle with living their own narrative – Hunter who lives his life according to his own internal narration, Carley, who rewrites her life in Aftermemory, Bree who is so self-conscious and defensive that she invents literary devices in her life and Justin, who does not live at all, rather inventing the story of his life to be printed in the papers.
Dr. Zuk is first and foremost a terrific parasitologist. The portions of the book that Zuk spends discussing her own Ph.D. thesis and her own research, especially regarding sexual selection. The central portion of the book from about page 80 to page 180 is fascinating & probably should have been released as a stand-alone book – it is focused, it flows and the topic is fascinating (these are the chapters on sexual selection, infection differences between the sexes and sexually transmitted diseases.)
The first 80 pages drag, and are covered both more interestingly and in more detail in hundreds of other popular science books. Also, the topics in these chapters (heterozygote advantage, hygeine hypothesis) have little to do with Zuk's central themes. Theis portion of the book also is infested with what Zuk seems to think are wry little asides, which grate terribly. The concluding paragraphs are interesting, but lack the compulsive readable of the earlier chapters.
Harriet McBryde Johnson may have looked at her life as being “too late to die young;” however, she died younger than she should have and her unique, powerful voice was lost to us. I tend to be skeptical about freshman novels, skeptical about the first person, skeptical about authorial self-inserts and skeptical about manifestos parading as novels. Accidents of Nature falls into all of the above categories; however, it is transcendent.
First and foremost, for a lawyer with no formal training on creative writing, Johnson has an unbelievable knack with characterization. Her characters are understated, but unique; flawed but sympathetic. Even characters that disagree with her point of view are granted strengths. The message in Accidents of Nature is very similar to that of “Too Late to Die Young;” however, in novel format, it is somehow easier to understand – that Johnson is suggesting an approach that is taken to all people with disabilities, not just razor sharp Southern ADA lawyers who happen to be disabled. And while groups such as Disability is Natural are beginning to champion similar movements, Johnson is one of the first and one of the loudest to take her approach to the disability movement. Accidents of Nature is guaranteed to challenge how all of us think disability and Johnson makes it clear, by inserting a caricature of herself, that even she is not above reproach.
I read this in a sitting, but it will stay with me for a long, long time.
This memoir of one of the most famous medical examiners is a decent showing. It is immediately clear that Dr. Baden's strength is science, rather than writing – many of his cases lack a proper setup, climax and/or conclusion and he could stand to add some excitement to his descriptions of his findings.
The two major flaws of this book are length and audience. At approximately 250 pages for a narrative that covers Kennedy, Belushi, Marilyn Monroe, three serial killers, a prison riot, Baden's sundry employment history and several other chapters, each section can only be granted 2-3 pages, which really undermines the richness of the narrative. In terms of Dr. Baden's intended audience, it is simply unclear. He states in his conclusions that one of his intentions is to encourage more medical students to enter the field; however, as a senior medical student, I was untouched by his accounts. The clinical discussion did not occur at a high enough scientific level to intrigue me. At the other extreme, I am doubtful of how interesting this book would be to a purely lay audience – there are several pages dedicated to the politics of the office of medical examiner, untold descriptions of hyoid bone fractures and petechiae and vitreous fluid, much of which with little explanation. A third drawback is that Unnatural Death is beginning to show its age – Baden's discussion of the pathophysiology of cirrhosis is outdated and his account of how to prevent SIDS makes no mention of sleeping position, which is now the standard of care.
Nevertheless, Unnatural Death is a quick read and a rare first hand account of the myriad of roles taken on by a medical examiner, from autopsy to crime scene investigation to courtroom. If you can overcome the awkward pacing and uncanny valley between medical text and popular science book, it is certainly worth a read.
While unique in concept, there are so many things that bothered me about this book, I hardly know where to start.
First and foremost, while Sebold achieved great commercial success with this freshman novel, it still reads as a freshman novel. The schtick is clearly the only part of the book thought through and exists to cover the lack of other literary elements.
The first person, omnipresent narrative is clunky and not well explained (if the narrator knows what people are thinking show her figuring out that she knows!) and leads to a very much told, rather than shown, storyline.
The historical setting is both unnecessary and goes unmentioned for several hundred pages, so when reminded 200 pages in that the date is 1977, it is very confusing.
There are a plethora of characters, all of whom seem minor, since not enough time is spent on any for them to be more of a cliche.
The pacing is deplorable – several years will pass over the course of two pages and then 50 pages will be spent on a single day or two, with the years that pass without mention covering such important events as everyone coming to believe the main character's father on the identity of the killer, while the time that we focus on covers the sexual explorations of the main character's little sister. The payload of the book, as it were, comes in the last 20 pages, with no harbinger and no evidence that this was the intended ending.
The intended audience is also unclear. The writing style is clearly too juvenile for a larger adult/older teen audience, and the literary foibles are difficult to overlook, even for the audience of adults/older teens who read young adult fiction. At the same time, the focus on the book being rape and murder and several explicit sexual passages make this book at best uncomfortable reading for young teens.
A fascinating historical and medical perspective on fatal familial insomnia and prion disorders in general, highlighting historical and modern controversies on these fascinating diseases. Max's strength lies in characterization and the placement of the events occurring in one family with FFI within a historical context. His prose is rich and readable. The subject matter is unspeakably sad, but Max handles a book about rapid neurodegeneration with ease, focusing on the excitement of discovery, the hopes of family and the scientific and medical curiosity evoked by the strange mysteries of prion disorders.
The major flaw is that by attempting to focus on prion disorders in general, what Max covers in breadth often lacks in depth. The discussion of kuru seems to focus on one of the main researcher's pedophilia to a large extent, which seems to occur in place of a real examination of the husband and wife team that did the anthropological work to discover the true origins of the disease. It would be both more salient and more interesting to focus instead on the controversies of cannibalism and how that discovery was made. In addition, Max remarks several times on the similarity between scrapie and FFI to the already discovered hereditary prion disorders CJD and GSS, without ever really discussing the discovery of those conditions. Since one of the stated goals of the book is to bring about public awareness and support for research to inherited prion disorders, more exploration of these two diseases would have added a lot, in addition to enriching the history of the field.
When this book first arrived, I was not quite sure why I had registered to receive an episotlary novel set in a retirement home. Most epistolary novels suffer from clumsy exposition and slow pacing. However, Getting the Picture was immediately compulsively readable for me, with the epistolary format only very occasionally being disruptive to the flow of the narrative.
This is truly a unique work – the multi-narrator format is used to its full potential, showing a multitude of characters first from an external perspective, and then, once the reader has her loyalty set, Salway changes narrators in order to reveal the motivations of another characters, changing our sympathies all over again. The ending is telegraphed about three-quarters of the way through, but that makes the redemption theme no less sweet or rewarding.
The real charm of Getting the Picture is the quirky, full-of-life characterizations that Salway brings to her geriatric characters. They are colorful, storied and ultimately extremely believable. The younger characters are also well-drawn, but less memorable.
Professor Ekman is attempting several things with one book: an introduction to the evolutionary basis for emotions and emotional expression; a definition for “emotion”; identification of the indivisible, fundemental emotions and a primer in how to read the emotions of others. Somehow, despite this book's short length (especially given that it is liberally peppered with photographs), he achieves all of these things. Emotions Revealed is fascinating and useful.
