All Reviews
Reviews are listed in reverse chronological order, with the most recent review appearing first in the list.
The Forgotten Girls
This dark Danish murder mystery starts out with the body of a middle aged woman found in the woods. Detective Louise Rick has lived in the area for most…
The New I Do
The notion that people are somehow failures if they go through with a divorce is still common thought even though approximately half of all people end up…
Zen Encounters with Loneliness
The French philosopher Gilles Deleuze once wrote that, “Writing is a question of becoming, always incomplete, always in the midst of being formed.” The a…
Aristotle and Poetic Justice
As the second in the series, this book sets out to develop the characters of Aristotle and his friend/protege Stephanos even further. Aristotle is no lon…
Aristotle Detective
This novel merges ancient history with a mystery that appeals to the modern reader, while introducing characters for series of mystery novels. In this st…
Being Realistic about Reasons
Contemporary philosophy sometimes looks comfortable and somehow all encompassing. Or so at least some of its adherents would like us to believe. Ac…
Empathy and Morality
The popular and academic discussion of empathy has seen a steady expansion in recent years and it is not uncommon to read about the close connection betw…
Evolved Morality
The academic world is witnessing the formation and rapidly evolving field of animal studies. I’m not referring to the narrower field of animal righ…
Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life
Finding Meaning in the Second Half of Life by Jungian analyst James Hollis is a soul searching book on how to live middle age with awarenes…
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Free: Why Science Hasn’t Disproved Free Will
This book might be useful as an introduction to the scientific literature on free will, but I found it underwhelming despite its promise (perhaps purely…
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Mindfulness-Based Treatment Approaches: Clinician’s Guide to Evidence Base and Applications
Mindfulness is a technique that is integral to the Teachings of the Buddha and it is a very simple form of meditation that was little…
Philosophical Methodology
In Philosophical Methodology: The Armchair or The Laboratory?, Matthew C. Haug has assembled a collection of essays impressive in scope and…
Posthumanism
Once upon a time the human was at the center of the universe. Now, the unified and autonomous human subject is a myth. “There is no more a sovereign subj…
See How Small
See How Small is not a happy book. It is a story of misery in small-town USA, shared among many narrators. The start of the novel set…
The Core Question: Who Am I?
This is a surprising little book. Written by Mark Zyga, who tells us that “he has been working with individuals as a practitioner and hypnotherapist for…
The Looked After Kid: Memoirs from a Children’s Home
The Looked After Kid is a book about the life of the author, Paolo Hewitt, focusing sharply on Hewitt’s personal experience as a looked aft…
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The Positive Side of Negative Emotions
As Parrott is quick to point out, life without negative emotions is an unlikely event, as much as, say, expecting clear skies each day. We are hardwired…
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The Secret Wisdom of the Earth
Kevin Gillooly is 14, and he and his parents have just moved to spend some time with his grandfather in the mining town of Medgar in Eastern Kentucky. Th…
The Teenage Brain
There have been enough popular science “brain” books published by now that even before looking at this one, we can expect several features, given the cur…
The Weariness of the Self
Sociologist Alain Ehrenberg’s detailed and challenging account of depression is the first English translation of La fatigue d’être soi: D&…
Touch
Understanding Love
With the possible exception of television, which more and more is turning to old movies for its programming, film is the popular art form in North…
A Natural History of Human Thinking
Early in his lectures on ‘genetic epistemology’ delivered in 1968 at the University of Columbia, Jean Piaget described the basic tenet of this version of…
American Melancholy
In this thought-provoking, short book, Laura Hirshbein, a psychiatrist and historian of psychiatry, presents compelling evidence that depression, as we k…
Cerebrum Anthology 2013
I just love books like this. In the shape of the greats, this series from the Dana Foundation allow for quick and easy, but erudite reading of exciting i…