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I Neuroni Della Lettura (2009)

by Stanislas Dehaene(Favorite Author)

3.9 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

8860302803 (ISBN13: 9788860302809)

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Raffaello Cortina

review 1: I started this book having read a few others on the same topic already this year. The new science of reading, introduction and opening chapter didn't disappoint and was a good way into the topic, asking the reader to consider the mystery of the reading ape. I'm intrigued by this topic, so the heavily jargon ,loaded writing style only make things more interesting, as first at least. The quotes and links to the history of reading were useful in illustrating these opening points. I think that the most impressive parts of this book for me were in the first half, through the chapter on how we read, including details on the inadequacy of the human eye to be put to the difficult task of reading, and through the variation between different languages which was informative and reada... moreble. As others have commented, this book gets a bit difficult to read through quickly from chapter 2, because of all the technical talk on the areas of the brain and how the brain adapts itself to read in every individual who begins the task of learning to read. The diagrams were complex but necessary. Chapter 3 is again back onthe trail of the mysterious reading ape, and this chapter was a fascinating insight into how far we have come but yet how close we are to the animal kingdom. Closely followed by the chapter on learning to read, this was again a very interesting look at the process of reading, I was particularly interested in the reading history of classroom trends, and some warnings about ways not to teach reading. The dyslexic brain chapter shed new light on a topic I've only learned a little about and then to look at the problems of symmetry in reading was really useful also. In all this book by itself could become a course in reading and I was really impressed by its range. I'll be coming back to the book again for reference. Well worth the time spent getting to the end. July 2014
review 2: Tons of amazing data! He oversimplified the evolution of Egyptian writing systems a lot, and I think his section on the evolution of language could benefit greatly from focusing a lot more on the earliest writing systems, such as those of the Sumerians, Olmecs, and Egyptians, rather than talking about the latin alphabet at first. A lot of what he describes as a very swift evolution from pictographs to stylized alphabets took thousands of years and was not at all inevitable. However, that was one small section in an otherwise excellent book, and his specialty is neuroscience, not the history of writing systems, so this is a minor flaw. I really liked the suggestion that 'reading' the natural world and tracking animals was the cognitive precursor to reading. That makes a lot of sense. less

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