Book Reviews

Useful stuff, but probably could have been handled in an article. The core of Lehrer’s argument is that we make better decisions using logic when the decision is simple – like a choice among 3 kinds of toothpaste. But when the decision is tough – which car to buy among 30 choices? – then emotion and logic together are better than logic alone. Lots of good stories of good and bad decisions, especially ones made under duress or during life and death situations. You’ll certainly be pleased you’re not an airplane pilot after reading this book.

I'm a sucker for any book with the title “The Zen of …” So I picked up The Zen of Listening with high hopes. It’s a gentle, good book, especially for beginners and those with ADD. But for anyone who has thought about or read about listening, there won’t be many surprises here. Just good, commonsense Zen teachings about mindfulness, presence, and attentiveness. Shafir shares some good stories and the sense of calm engagement she projects is very, well, Zen-like. I think she would make a great teacher face-to-face.

Damasio addresses the age-old philosophical question of where the self resides, and where it comes from. Do we have something called a “soul” that is immaterial, and different from our physical beings? If not, where does the sense of self come from, and how does it differ from that of a sea slug, or a squirrel? Damasio spends a good deal of time very carefully building his “brief,” like a lawyer, that if you put enough mental functions together, the vast majority of which we share with the rest of the animals, you get a sense of self – self coming to mind, in fact. If in the end you’re not entirely persuaded, it’s because you’re remembering other evidence from other books, or experiences. Damasio’s case is compelling, lucid, and shrewd, but it won’t satisfy anyone who thinks he has a soul.

I'm assuming all lawyers read this book as part of their education, so I’m recommending it to anyone who’s ever watched a courtroom scene in a TV show or movie – or read about one in a murder mystery – and wondered if real life was like that. Here’s the answer, in very clear prose, with excellent examples from real, famous trials (like Timothy McVeigh and O.J.). If you have an amateur's interest in the law, this book is absolutely riveting. (It comes with DVDs of the relevant courtroom scenes, but I haven’t viewed those.)

This delightful read essentially follows – with more detail than the movie of the same name – the lives of Lionel Logue and George VI of England, and how they intersected. The former was the latter’s speech coach, because “Bertie” was afflicted with a stammer, and when he had to take over the throne upon the abdication of his brother, he had to be able to speak in public. The treatment was a long, slow success, and the King went on to become a decent (if slightly ponderous) public speaker. Some of his speeches were extremely important to the war effort in WWII, in that they meant a great deal to the morale of the English.

My only complaint (as a speech coach like Logue) is that he never confides his methods to his diaries. We can make educated guesses, since his early training was in the elocution of the day, but it's frustrating not to have the details.

This marvelous little academic book describes the results of studies the authors did that determined – wait for it – that people treat computers, TV and other electronic media as if they were human. In other words, we’re polite to computers when we address them directly, and less polite when we’re talking about them behind their backs. The whole idea seems obvious when you think about it for more than 5 minutes, but I’m sure it didn’t when the authors set out to study the matter, and anyway the studies tell you how and why. And it is interesting. But I think the material could have filled one very respectable article in, say, Psychology Today. Nonetheless, this is a seminal work in our understanding of how we related to machines, and illuminates (without directly addressing it) a larger issue of how our brains work: we attach emotions to memories (images) in our brains in order to remember things. The stronger the emotions, the stronger the memory. So it’s not really that we’re personalizing TVs; rather, we emotionalize everything. This insights comes thanks to recent brain research – after this book was written – so the authors can’t be blamed for only getting a piece of the picture. The larger point (that we emotionalize everything) has a thousand implications for all sorts of fields and common-sense misconceptions, such as testimony in law, education, politics, and so on, but most of the implications are so surprising that experts in those fields have so far resisted bringing them into their thinking.

Another brilliant book by everyone’s favorite medical doctor, Oliver Sacks. This one is about his own medical adventures, for a change, as well as a passel of other interesting patients, and it’s extraordinary for the dispassionate yet kindly way he deals with himself as well as the others. Truly an heroic man, and always worth reading.

By the way, he was a good friend and support to Harold Pinter and Antonia Fraser, helping Pinter through illness in the same kind way he helps everyone else.

I’m always on the lookout for good new books on public speaking, but I can’t recommend this one. The advice is too general for anyone who has any sort of experience speaking – or has read more than one or two books on the subject. And the design of the book is cartoonish, and not in a good way, which is odd since Schwertly is a designer. A disappointment.

Jones – Martin Luther King’s lawyer – has written a page turner about the run up to the great “I Have A Dream” speech and the March on Washington. If you’re a fan of King or the speech, this book is a must-read. Jones manages to put you in the contingency of the moment, and that’s rare in history writing. In other words, he reminds you that the organizers didn’t know the March was going to be a success as they were organizing it – or that King would make history with an incredible speech. They were more concerned with buses and hotel rooms and the police. The stuff that history is made of.

A friend passed this book on to me saying that it had useful stuff in it about the language of teams in business – what they say and how their language affects their productivity. The book was written in the 90s when ‘teams’ were a subject of much more breathless business prose than today. So it feels dated, and once you get beyond the basic insight, which is that what teams say does matter, than you don’t learn much more. Teams that argue and deal with issues openly do better than teams that pull rank, keep their mouths shut, and just get along. That’s basically it.