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)