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The Rise Of The Superman: Decoding The Mysteries Of The Ultimate Human Performance (2014)

by Steven Kotler(Favorite Author)

3.87 of 5 Votes: 4

languge

English

genre

Nonfiction

publisher

Quercus

review 1: If you want to read a bunch of extreme sports stories, this is a good book.If you want to read about the rise of superman: decoding the science of ultimate human performance, I would skip.The author does not do a good job of constructing a cogent argument. For example:---The author starts by making an extremely large mistake that is the premise of the book. He asserts that achieving sports records is Biology+Training+Technology+Mental and that biology, training and technology have stayed the same, so it must be mental. But, they haven't stayed the same. (this is the tip of the iceberg btw)During the draft for WWI something like 1 in 10 were disqualified for diseases steming from nutrition. Goiters, pellagra and rickets for example. I grew up in Maine in the 1980's and man... morey adults had twisted limbs from uncorrected breaks, cleft palates and deviated septums. They were blind in one eye or wasted from parasites. Not to mention alcoholic or mentally damaged from abuses they suffered as children. This is the first full generation of people to be healthy. People are physically better than they used to be.As for training, science was not applied, for cultural reasons, to sports until recently. And then only piecemeal. (I could go on but it will just come off like I am saying jocks are dumb. And that’s not the point. Jocks are still dumb, it’s the coaches who changed)And finally technology. Tech has advanced more significantly than people might imagine. It seems like we transitioned from sturdy metal to cheap plastic. However modern materials have advanced to expensive plastics. Transitioning from one tech base to the next initially caused material that were shoddy in some ways. But now modern composites are just better. Things are also made to tighter specifications and the means of producing tools is more widely distributed. So all of these things contribute. Not just flow.---That's just one example.Ultimately the author both fails to grasp the subject and cannot successfully present a logical argument.But there are lots of cool adventure sports stories.
review 2: Action sport stories were riveting, but often cut from the "flow" of the science (pun intended). It would have been nice to have a more conclusive, cut and dry formula. Instead, information was scattered throughout and often subtle instead of blatant. This contrasted with the overt depictions of the stories of athletes such as Laird Hamilton, Danny Way and Jeremy Jones. Enjoyable read nonetheless. less

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