my mind on books

How Literature Saved My Life by David Shields (Knopf, 2013)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk)

Book description from the publisher:

In this wonderfully intelligent, stunningly honest, and painfully funny book, acclaimed writer David Shields uses himself as a representative for all readers and writers who seek to find salvation in literature.

Blending confessional criticism and anthropological autobiography, Shields explores the power of literature (from Blaise Pascal’s Pensées to Maggie Nelson’s Bluets, Renata Adler’s Speedboat to Proust’s A Remembrance of Things Past) to make life survivable, maybe even endurable. Shields evokes his deeply divided personality (his “ridiculous” ambivalence), his character flaws, his woes, his serious despairs. Books are his life, but when they come to feel unlifelike and archaic, he revels in a new kind of art that is based heavily on quotation and consciousness and self-consciousness–perfect, since so much of what ails him is acute self-consciousness. And he shares with us a final irony: he wants “literature to assuage human loneliness, but nothing can assuage human loneliness. Literature doesn’t lie about this–which is what makes it essential.”

A captivating, thought-provoking, utterly original way of thinking about the essential acts of reading and writing.

Google Books preview:

See also: Author’s website

This Explains Everything: Deep, Beautiful, and Elegant Theories of How the World Works ed. by John Brockman (Harper Perennial, 2013)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk)

Book description from the publisher:

Drawn from the cutting-edge frontiers of science, This Explains Everything will revolutionize your understanding of the world.

What is your favorite deep, elegant, or beautiful explanation?

This is the question John Brockman, publisher of Edge.org (“The world’s smartest website”—The Guardian), posed to the world’s most influential minds. Flowing from the horizons of physics, economics, psychology, neuroscience, and more, This Explains Everything presents 150 of the most surprising and brilliant theories of the way of our minds, societies, and universe work.

Jared Diamond on biological electricity • Nassim Nicholas Taleb on positive stress • Steven Pinker on the deep genetic roots of human conflict • Richard Dawkins on pattern recognition • Nobel Prize-winning physicist Frank Wilczek on simplicity • Lisa Randall on the Higgs mechanism • BRIAN Eno on the limits of intuition • Richard Thaler on the power of commitment • V. S. Ramachandran on the “neural code” of consciousness • Nobel Prize winner ERIC KANDEL on the power of psychotherapy • Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi on “Lord Acton’s Dictum” • Lawrence M. Krauss on the unification of electricity and magnetism • plus contributions by Martin J. Rees • Kevin Kelly • Clay Shirky • Daniel C. Dennett • Sherry Turkle • Philip Zimbardo • Lee Smolin • Rebecca Newberger Goldstein • Seth Lloyd • Stewart Brand • George Dyson • Matt Ridley

See also: 2012 Annual Question at Edge.org

The Artful Species: Aesthetics, Art, and Evolution by Stephen Davies (Oxford University Press, USA, 2013)

(amazon.co.uk)

Book description from the publisher:

The Artful Species explores the idea that our aesthetic responses and art behaviors are connected to our evolved human nature. Our humanoid forerunners displayed aesthetic sensibilities hundreds of thousands of years ago and the art standing of prehistoric cave paintings is virtually uncontested.

In Part One, Stephen Davies analyses the key concepts of the aesthetic, art, and evolution, and explores how they might be related. He considers a range of issues, including whether animals have aesthetic tastes and whether art is not only universal but cross-culturally comprehensible.

Part Two examines the many aesthetic interests humans take in animals and how these reflect our biological interests, and the idea that our environmental and landscape preferences are rooted in the experiences of our distant ancestors. In considering the controversial subject of human beauty, evolutionary psychologists have traditionally focused on female physical attractiveness in the context of mate selection, but Davies presents a broader view which decouples human beauty from mate choice and explains why it goes more with social performance and self-presentation.

Part Three asks if the arts, together or singly, are biological adaptations, incidental byproducts of nonart adaptations, or so removed from biology that they rate as purely cultural technologies. Davies does not conclusively support any one of the many positions considered here, but argues that there are grounds, nevertheless, for seeing art as part of human nature. Art serves as a powerful and complex signal of human fitness, and so cannot be incidental to biology. Indeed, aesthetic responses and art behaviors are the touchstones of our humanity.

See also: Author at PhilPapers

Why Humans Like to Cry: The Evolutionary Origins of Tragedy by Michael Trimble (Oxford University Press, USA, 2012)

(kindle ed.), (amazon.co.uk)

Book description from the publisher:

Human beings are the only species who cry for emotional reasons. We weep at tragedies both in our own lives and in the lives of others–remarkably, we even cry over fictional characters in film, opera, novels, and theatre. But why is weeping unique to humanity? What is different about the structure of our brains that sets us apart from all other animals? When on our evolutionary journey did we first recognize the tragedy of life? When did our early ancestors first cry?

In this fascinating volume, neurologist Michael Trimble offers a wide-ranging discussion of emotional crying, looking at its physiology as well as its evolutionary past. To shed light on why crying is uniquely human, Trimble offers an insightful account of the neuroanatomy of the human brain, highlighting differences from those of other primates, especially with regards to the representation of emotion and the circuitry related to the release of tears. He also looks at the epidemiology of crying (who cries, where, and when) and he discusses why people often feel good after crying and why we have developed art forms–most powerfully, music–that move us to tears. Throughout, Trimble weaves a discussion of Nietzsche’s Birth of Tragedy, exploring the origin of Tragedy as an art form, and using the images of Apollo and Dionysus as representative of biological and cognitive forces which are integral to the behavior and thinking of mankind. Finally, Trimble reveals that our emotional responses to tragedy–and crying for emotional reasons–have evolved over several millions of years.

The insights found here shed much light on an enigmatic part of our humanity. The book offers a profound glimpse into the human heart as well as deep insight into the role of art in our emotional lives.

The Human Face of Big Data by Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt (Against All Odds Productions, 2012)

(amazon.co.uk – 7 Dec 2012)

Book description from the publisher:

The images and stories captured in The Human Face of Big Data are the result of an extraordinary artistic, technical, and logistical juggling act aimed at capturing the human face of the Big Data Revolution.

Big Data is defined as the real time collection, analyses, and visualization of vast amounts of the information.  In the hands of Data Scientists this raw information is fueling a revolution which many people believe may have as big an impact on humanity going forward as the Internet has over the past two decades. Its enable us to sense, measure, and understand aspects of our existence in ways never before possible.

The Human Face of Big Data captures, in glorious photographs and moving essays, an extraordinary revolution sweeping, almost invisibly, through business, academia, government, healthcare, and everyday life. It’s already enabling us to provide a healthier life for our children. To provide our seniors with independence while keeping them safe. To help us conserve precious resources like water and energy. To alert us to tiny changes in our health, weeks or years before we develop a life-threatening illness. To peer into our own individual genetic makeup. To create new forms of life.  And soon, as many predict, to re-engineer our own species. And we’ve barely scratched the surface . . .

Over the past decade, Rick Smolan and Jennifer Erwitt, co-founders of Against All Odds Productions, have produced a series of ambitious global projects in collaboration with hundreds of the world’s leading photographers, writers, and graphic designers. Their Day in the Life projects were credited for creating a mass market for large-format illustrated books (rare was the coffee table book without one).

Today their projects aim at sparking global conversations about emerging topics ranging from the Internet (24 Hours in Cyberspace), to Microprocessors (One Digital Day), to how the human race is learning to heal itself, (The Power to Heal) to the global water crisis (Blue Planet Run).

This year Smolan and Erwitt dispatched photographers and writers in every corner of the globe to explore the world of “Big Data” and to determine if it truly does, as many in the field claim, represent a brand new toolset for humanity, helping address the biggest challenges facing our species.

The book features 10 essays by noted writers:
Introduction: OCEANS OF DATA by Dan Gardner
Chapter 1: REFLECTIONS IN A DIGITAL MIRROR by Juan Enriquez, CEO, Biotechnomomy
Chapter 2: OUR DATA OURSELVES by Kate Green, the Economist
Chapter 3: QUANTIFYING MYSELF by AJ Jacobs, Esquire
Chapter 4: DARK DATA by Marc Goodman, Future Crime Institute
Chapter 5:  THE SENTIENT SENSOR MESH by Susan Karlin, Fast Company
Chapter 6: TAKING THE PULSE OF THE PLANET by Esther Dyson, EDventure
Chapter 7: CITIZEN SCIENCE by Gareth Cook, the Boston Globe
Chapter 8: A DEMOGRAPH OF ONE by Michael Malone, Forbes magazine
Chapter 9: THE ART OF DATA by Aaron Koblin, Google Artist in Residence
Chapter 10: DATA DRIVEN by Jonathan Harris, Cowbird

The book will also feature stunning info graphics from NIGEL HOLMES.
1) GOOGLING GOOGLE: all the ways Google uses Data to help humanity
2) DATA IS THE NEW OIL
3) THE WORLD ACCORDING TO TWITTER
4) AUCTIONING EYEBALLS: The world of Internet advertising
5) FACEBOOK: A Billion Friends

See also: Book website