my mind on books

The Kingdom of Infinite Space: An Encounter with Your Head by Raymond Tallis has been out for a few months in the UK, but just recently became available in the US, published by Yale University Press.

Product Description

In this pathbreaking book, one of Britain’s most eloquent and original thinkers writes about the head, what happens in it, and how it is and is not connected to our sense of identity and consciousness. Blending science, philosophy, and humor, Raymond Tallis examines the extraordinarily complex relationship we have with our heads. His aim, as he says, “is to turn readers into astonished tourists of the piece of the world that is closest to them, so they never again take for granted the head that looks at them from the mirror.” Readers will delight that this is precisely what he accomplishes.

The voyage begins with a meditation on the self-portrait of a mirror image, followed by a consideration of the head’s various secretions. Tallis contemplates the air we exhale; the subtle meanings of nods, winks, and smiles; the mysteries of hearing, taste, and smell. He discusses the metaphysics of the gaze, the meaning of kissing, and the processes by which the head comes to understand the world. Along the way he offers intriguing digressions on such notions as “having” and “using” one’s head, and enjoying and suffering it. Tallis concludes with his thoughts on the very thing the reader’s head has been doing throughout the book: thinking.

Tallis’s Hunger is part of the new Art of Living Series from Acumen Publishing.

Product Description
Understanding hunger is the key to understanding ourselves. While our hungers seem the most obvious things about us, they are also deeply mysterious, arising out of, and casting light on, the unique character of human consciousness. In humans, physiological need is transformed into a multitude of demands that are remote from organic necessity. Even first-level biological hunger is experienced differently in humans, and little in human feeding behaviour has any parallel in the animal kingdom. Raymond Tallis takes us through the different levels of our hunger, showing that our primary appetites give rise to a myriad of pleasures and tastes that are elaborated in second-level hedonistic hungers, creating new values. The evolution of appetite into desire opens the way to social hungers such as the hunger for acknowledgement. Awareness of death awakens a further level of hunger for something that lies beyond the pell-mell of successive experiences leading towards extinction. The art of living is the art of managing our hungers.

See also: “Raymond Tallis: Larger Than Life” at TimesOnline (Sept. 20, 2008)

Honest Signals: How They Shape Our World by Alex (Sandy) Pentland (MIT Press, 2008) recently appeared on the bookstore shelves.

Product Description
How can you know when someone is bluffing? Paying attention? Genuinely interested? The answer, writes Sandy Pentland in Honest Signals, is that subtle patterns in how we interact with other people reveal our attitudes toward them. These unconscious social signals are not just a back channel or a complement to our conscious language; they form a separate communication network. Biologically based “honest signaling,” evolved from ancient primate signaling mechanisms, offers an unmatched window into our intentions, goals, and values. If we understand this ancient channel of communication, Pentland claims, we can accurately predict the outcomes of situations ranging from job interviews to first dates.

Pentland, an MIT professor, has used a specially designed digital sensor worn like an ID badge—a “sociometer”—to monitor and analyze the back-and-forth patterns of signaling among groups of people. He and his researchers found that this second channel of communication, revolving not around words but around social relations, profoundly influences major decisions in our lives—even though we are largely unaware of it. Pentland presents the scientific background necessary for understanding this form of communication, applies it to examples of group behavior in real organizations, and shows how by “reading” our social networks we can become more successful at pitching an idea, getting a job, or closing a deal. Using this “network intelligence” theory of social signaling, Pentland describes how we can harness the intelligence of our social network to become better managers, workers, and communicators.

Visit the author’s website for more information.

Outliers: The Story of Success by Malcolm Gladwell is scheduled for a Nov 18 release, but available for pre-order and the publisher Hachette Book Group has an excerpt available here, which appears to be the whole prologue.

Product Description
In this stunning new book, Malcolm Gladwell takes us on an intellectual journey through the world of “outliers”–the best and the brightest, the most famous and the most successful. He asks the question: what makes high-achievers different? His answer is that we pay too much attention to what successful people are like, and too little attention to where they are from: that is, their culture, their family, their generation, and the idiosyncratic experiences of their upbringing. Along the way he explains the secrets of software billionaires, what it takes to be a great soccer player, why Asians are good at math, and what made the Beatles the greatest rock band.

Brilliant and entertaining, OUTLIERS is a landmark work that will simultaneously delight and illuminate.

BuzzFeed has some more links on Outliers and Gladwell…

“Recent self-help books on happiness” lists these titles (which I’ve linked to Amazon):

“What Happy Women Know” by Dan Baker

“Happiness: Unlocking the Mysteries of Psychological Wealth” by Ed Diener and Robert Biswas-Diener

“The Happiness Trap: How to Stop Struggling and Start Living” by Russ Harris

“The How of Happiness: A Scientific Approach to Getting the Life You Want” by Sonja Lyubomirsky

“Happiness for Two” by Alexandra Stoddard

“Happiness Is an Inside Job: Practicing for a Joyful Life” by Sylvia Boorstein

“Happiness for Dummies” by W. Doyle Gentry

“The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the Psychology of Happiness” by Arlene Matthews Uhl

Distraction: A Philosopher’s Guide to Being Free by Australian philosopher Damon Young (Melbourne University Publishing, 2008), may already be available in Australia but hasn’t made its way to the US yet. (Also a pre-order at amazon.ca and amazon.co.uk.)

Book website is here, with links to reviews, an excerpt, and more.

Product Description
Exploring the nature of distraction, the popular philosophy surrounding it, and its role in modern life, this book surmises that distraction is often a matter of what one values. Written in a playful tone, this view analyzes important aspects of life, showing that technology, acquaintances, jobs, and addictions often waste time and energy. Through the history of popular philosophy, it is demonstrated that patient, sensitive, and thoughtful attention to the world suggests that the opposite of a life of distraction is one of grateful appreciation.