All Reviews
Reviews are listed in reverse chronological order, with the most recent review appearing first in the list.
A Colorful History of Popular Delusions
Nowadays, exposure to the news media, including TV news shows, newspapers, magazines, and news blogs, is likely to entail exposure to a variety of statem…
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Adult Children of Emotionally Immature Parents
When we think about someone being emotionally immature, most of us probably think about how young children may fit into such a category. But what if the…
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City of Halves
City of Halves certainly starts off with a bang. Lily is an expert computer hacker and she uncovers information that will help her father win hi…
Fans of the Impossible Life
Fans of the Impossible Life deals with teenage depression, eating disorders, sexual identity, drug use, homelessness, foster homes, discrim…
First Person Accounts of Mental Illness and Recovery
This is a collection of descriptions of mental illness and other descriptions of mental disorders written by people who have them. There are thirteen sec…
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Health Care in America
Some historians of medicine seem to imagine readers who have time on their hands. John Burnham’s new book, Health Care in America: A History has…
Heretic
A favorite Nietzsche quote of mine is “Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.” One of the problems with all religions is that fo…
How Propaganda Works
Jason Stanley is a philosopher working in the fields of formal semantics, philosophy and language and analytic epistemology. In this book, he gives a con…
Inside the O’Briens
[This review contains spoilers.] Lisa Genova made a name for herself with her novel …
Meaning in Life
Metz’s new book Meaning in Life is a result of ten years of research into the question of meaning IN life. Metz divides his boo…
Namaste Yoga: Season 3 Part 1
Namaste Yoga is produced by Namaste TV, a Canadian-based company which offers yoga videos for television and online sites such as YouTube. Here in…
None of the Above
There are not many young adult novels about intersex individuals, so None of the Above automatically carries some interest. It is narrated by Kr…
On the Punitive Society
Forty years ago Michel Foucault published his controversial book Discipline and Punish, subtitled The Birth of the Prison, wh…
Rethinking Normal
Rethinking Normal is a valiant, and necessary, first step towards recognizing the experiences of transgender people and representing their voice…
Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda
Simon is sixteen and gay, and he has only told one person. That person is another student at his high school, who he calls “Blue,” because he doesn’t kno…
The Making of DSM-III®
Innovators are often made great, not by their contemporaries, but by subsequent generations. This process of ennoblement is analogous to how children and…
The Unexpected Inheritance of Inspector Chopra
Police mysteries have widespread appeal, but it’s such a well-worn genre that it’s hard for authors to come up with anything new. So a new setting…
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What Psychiatry Left Out of the DSM-5
This is a remarkable short book, which I highly recommend. The theme of the book is that so…
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Wisdom
Wisdom is one of those constructs we tend to feel we understand, yet it is not simple to define and describe. A definition I found, separate from t…
Wittgenstein and Psychotherapy
Psychotherapist John M. Heaton has written an interesting book about practical philosophy and the use of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s thoughts on psychology. Th…
Choosing Not to Choose
If you think Barack Obama is a Nazi because he insists you acquire health insurance, then you’re not going to like Cass Sunstein’s Choosing Not…
Contemplative Psychotherapy Essentials
This week another shooter entered a public place, this time a college campus in Oregon, and once again maimed and killed another large number of young pe…
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Dementia
There are is a growing number of books about dementia and the challenges that families face when a loved one has Alzheimer’s or a similar neurological di…
Does Torture Work?
Torture is a troubling subject and this is a troubling book. Its aim is to use game theory to figure out whether the pragmatic justification of torture s…
Investigating Young People’s Sexual Cultures
The chapters in Investigating Young People’s Sexual Cultures were previously published as articles for a …
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