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Your Brain: The Missing Manual (2008)

by Matthew MacDonald(Favorite Author)

3.62 of 5 Votes: 5

ISBN

0596517785 (ISBN13: 9780596517786)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Pogue Press

review 1: This is a quirky little text about brain basics. It guides the reader through how the brain works, the science of sleep, how learning occurs, why we dream, and so on. It's a great introductory piece for anybody's who's interested in brain science. It is quite simple at times, but because it covers such a large range of topics, in-depth scientific detail would've likely been cumbersome. It has different kinds of articles to break up the prose, and there are even a couple quizzes to help the reader learn more about himselfI recommend this to anybody who's curious about the human brain which I know now, despite popular legend, does not weigh eight pounds.
review 2: It's an accurate roundup of current understanding of how the brain works, with a few quirks and some... more attempts at advice. I didn't enjoy it as much as the other brain books I've been reading because:(a) the discussion is fairly standard--if you've read another brain book, you've probably got most of what you need(b) the advice is pretty weak (really, I need to eat carbohydrates to give my brain energy?). Readers expect advice in a brain book to be "do this and you'll perform better" but it was basic general nutrition.(c) there were a few cognitive quirks discussed, but not as many as I would have liked.In summary, I prefer the "here's how our brains make mistakes" style points coupled with "and here's advice on how to avoid making them". I preferred "Kluge" for this type of content. If I were giving YB:TMM to someone, I'd give it to someone who hadn't read anything about cognition or the brain before. less

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