my mind on books

The Winner’s Brain: 8 Strategies Great Minds Use to Achieve Success by Jeff Brown and Mark Fenske with Liz Neporent (Da Capo Lifelong Books, 2010)

(Kindle edition)

(link for UK)
Product description from the publisher:

Ever wonder why some people seem blessed with success? In fact, everyone is capable of winning in life—you just need to develop the right brain for it.

In The Winner’s Brain, Drs. Jeffrey Brown and Mark J. Fenske use cutting-edge neuroscience to identify the secrets of those who succeed no matter what—and demonstrate how little it has to do with IQ or upbringing. Through simple everyday practices, Brown and Fenske explain how to unlock the brain’s hidden potential, using:

• Balance: Make emotions work in your favor
• Bounce: Create a failure-resistant brain
• Opportunity Radar: Spot hot prospects previously hidden by problems
• Focus Laser: Lock into what’s important
• Effort Accelerator: Cultivate the drive to win

Along the way, meet dozens of interesting people who possess “win factors” (like the inventor of Whac-A-Mole™) and glean fascinating information (like why you should never take a test while wearing red). Compulsively readable, The Winner’s Brain will not only give you an edge, but also motivate you to pursue your biggest dreams.

See also: Website for the book, where an excerpt is available, plus a link to the authors’ blog and more; Article from Harvard Mental Health Letter

Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality by Scott Belsky (Portfolio Hardcover, 2010)

(link for UK)

Product description from the publisher:

How the world’s leading innovators push their ideas to fruition again and again

Edison famously said that genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration. Ideas for new businesses, solutions to the world’s problems, and artistic breakthroughs are common, but great execution is rare.

According to Scott Belsky, the capacity to make ideas happen can be developed by anyone willing to develop their organizational habits and leadership capability. That’s why he founded Behance, a company that helps creative people and teams across industries develop these skills.

Belsky has spent six years studying the habits of creative people and teams that are especially productive-the ones who make their ideas happen time and time again. After interviewing hundreds of successful creatives, he has compiled their most powerful-and often counterintuitive-practices, such as:

•Generate ideas in moderation and kill ideas liberally
•Prioritize through nagging
•Encourage fighting within your team

While many of us obsess about discovering great new ideas, Belsky shows why it’s better to develop the capacity to make ideas happen-a capacity that endures over time.

See also: Website for the book, where an excerpt is available, and more.

Here’s a “summary preview” from readitfor.me:

Toward a Cognitive Theory of Narrative Acts ed. by Frederick Luis Aldama (University of Texas Press, 2010). Aldama is also the author of ‘Your Brain on Latino Comics’.

(‘Toward a Cognitive Theory of Narrative Acts’ at amazon.co.uk)

Product description from the publisher:

Toward a Cognitive Theory of Narrative Acts brings together in one volume cutting-edge research that turns to recent findings in cognitive and neurobiological sciences, psychology, linguistics, philosophy, and evolutionary biology, among other disciplines, to explore and understand more deeply various cultural phenomena, including art, music, literature, and film. The essays fulfilling this task for the general reader as well as the specialist are written by renowned authors H. Porter Abbott, Patrick Colm Hogan, Suzanne Keen, Herbert Lindenberger, Lisa Zunshine, Katja Mellman, Lalita Pandit Hogan, Klarina Priborkin, Javier Gutiérrez-Rexach, Ellen Spolsky, and Richard Walsh. Among the works analyzed are plays by Samuel Beckett, novels by Maxine Hong Kingston, music compositions by Igor Stravinsky, art by Jean-Baptiste-Simeon Chardin, and films by Michael Haneke. Each of the essays shows in a systematic, clear, and precise way how music, art, literature, and film work in and of themselves and also how they are interconnected. Finally, while each of the essays is unique in style and methodological approach, together they show the way toward a unified knowledge of artistic creativity.

The Table of Contents & Introduction are available at the publisher’s website.

Douglas Hofstadter (‘Godel, Escher, Bach,’ ‘I Am a Strange Loop’) and David Chalmers (‘The Conscious Mind’) have new books coming out later this year, something to look forward to, or preorder as a gift to your future self…

The Character of Consciousness (Philosophy of Mind) by David Chalmers (Oxford University Press, 2010) has a US publication date of Aug 12 according to Amazon, or July according to the publisher. The publication date is also listed as Aug 2010 at Amazon.co.uk.

Product description from the publisher:

What is consciousness? How does the subjective character of consciousness fit into an objective world? How can there be a science of consciousness? In this sequel to his groundbreaking and controversial The Conscious Mind, David Chalmers develops a unified framework that addresses these questions and many others. Starting with a statement of the “hard problem” of consciousness, Chalmers builds a positive framework for the science of consciousness and a nonreductive vision of the metaphysics of consciousness. He replies to many critics of The Conscious Mind, and then develops a positive theory in new directions. The book includes original accounts of how we think and know about consciousness, of the unity of consciousness, and of how consciousness relates to the external world. Along the way, Chalmers develops many provocative ideas: the “consciousness meter”, the Garden of Eden as a model of perceptual experience, and The Matrix as a guide to the deepest philosophical problems about consciousness and the external world. This book will be required reading for anyone interested in the problems of mind, brain, consciousness, and reality.

Hofstadter’s new book with co-author Emmanuel Sander, Surfaces and Essences, also referred to as The Essence of Thought, is due out June 2 according to Amazon, but publisher Basic Books indicates a publication date of Sept 27. May 6 is the pub date shown at Amazon.co.uk.

Product description from the publisher:

Is there one central mechanism upon which all human thinking rests? Cognitive scientists Douglas Hofstadter and Emmanuel Sander argue that there is. At this core is our incessant proclivity to take what we perceive, to abstract it, and to find resemblances to prior experiences—in other words, our ability to make analogies.

In The Essence of Thought, Hofstadter and Sander show how analogy-making pervades our thought at all levels—indeed, that we make analogies not once a day or once an hour, but many times per second. Thus, analogy is the mechanism that, silently and hidden, chooses our words and phrases for us when we speak, frames how we understand the most banal everyday situation, guides us in unfamiliar situations, and gives rise to great acts of imagination.

We categorize because of analogies that range from simple to subtle, and thus our categories, throughout our lives, expand and grow ever more fluid. Through examples galore and lively prose peppered, needless to say, with analogies large and small, Hofstadter and Sander offer us a new way of thinking about thinking.

Due out on April 15 — The Secret Life of the Grown-up Brain: The Surprising Talents of the Middle-Aged Mind by Barbara Strauch (Viking, 2010)

(link for UK)

Product description from the publisher:

A leading science writer examines how the brain’s capacity reaches its peak in middle age

For many years, scientists thought that the human brain simply decayed over time and its dying cells led to memory slips, fuzzy logic, negative thinking, and even depression. But new research from neuroscien­tists and psychologists suggests that, in fact, the brain reorganizes, improves in important functions, and even helps us adopt a more optimistic outlook in middle age. Growth of white matter and brain connectors allow us to recognize patterns faster, make better judgments, and find unique solutions to problems. Scientists call these traits cognitive expertise and they reach their highest levels in middle age.

In her impeccably researched book, science writer Barbara Strauch explores the latest findings that demonstrate, through the use of technology such as brain scans, that the middle-aged brain is more flexible and more capable than previously thought. For the first time, long-term studies show that our view of middle age has been misleading and incomplete. By detailing exactly the normal, healthy brain functions over time, Strauch also explains how its optimal processes can be maintained. Part scientific survey, part how-to guide, The Secret Life of the Grown-Up Brain is a fascinating glimpse at our surprisingly talented middle-aged minds.

added 4/14/10 – author interview & excerpt at NPR

Brain, Mind, and the Structure of Reality by Paul L. Nunez (Oxford University Press, 2010)

(link for UK)

Product description from the publisher:

Does the brain create the mind, or is some external entity involved? In addressing this “hard problem” of consciousness, we face a central human challenge: what do we really know and how do we know it? Tentative answers in this book follow from a synthesis of profound ideas, borrowed from philosophy, religion, politics, economics, neuroscience, physics, mathematics, and cosmology, the knowledge structures supporting our meager grasps of reality. This search for new links in the web of human knowledge extends in many directions: the “shadows” of our thought processes revealed by brain imagining, brains treated as complex adaptive systems that reveal fractal-like behavior in the brain’s nested hierarchy, resonant interactions facilitating functional connections in brain tissue, probability and entropy as measures of human ignorance, fundamental limits on human knowledge, and the central role played by information in both brains and physical systems. In Brain, Mind, and the Structure of Reality, Paul Nunez discusses the possibility of deep connections between relativity, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, and consciousness: all entities involved with fundamental information barriers. Dr Nunez elaborates on possible new links in this nested web of human knowledge that may tell us something new about the nature and origins of consciousness. In the end, does the brain create the mind? Or is the Mind already out there? You decide.