Metapsychology Online Reviews - Volume 16, Number 05
 
Featured Reviews
Mind Games: by Martin CohenMind Games:
by Martin Cohen
Tue, Dec 27th 2011
Playing with Fire by Roderick D. BuchananPlaying with Fire
by Roderick D. Buchanan
Tue, Dec 27th 2011
Asperger's and Girls by Tony Attwood, Temple Grandin, Catherine Faherty, Shelia Wagner, Mary Wrobel, Teresa Bolick, Lisa Iland, Jennifer McIlwee Myers, Ruth Snyder.Asperger's and Girls
by Tony Attwood, Temple Grandin, Catherine Faherty, Shelia Wagner, Mary Wrobel, Teresa Bolick, Lisa Iland, Jennifer McIlwee Myers, Ruth Snyder.
Tue, Dec 27th 2011
 
A Loving Approach to Dementia Care
Making Meaningful Connections with the Person Who Has Alzheimer's Disease or Other Dementia or Memory Loss
By Laura Wayman
Review by Chris Vaughan on Tue, Jan 31st 2012.
A Loving Approach to Dementia Care by Laura WaymanA close member of my family has dementia, a recent occurrence which has left us feeling  bewildered and helpless.  My relative’s loss of his short-term memory has led to emotional outbursts, inexplicable behaviour and an inability to enter into any kind of meaningful conversation, which has presented us with a seemingly insoluble conundrum.  So I approached A Loving Approach to Dementia Care not looking for answers, as dementia is a progressive and irreversible condition, but looking for ways of interacting with him in a manner that is beneficial for both of us and, as the
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Child Well-Being
Understanding Children's Lives
By Collette McAuley and Wendy Rose (Editors)
Review by John Mullen on Tue, Jan 31st 2012.
Child Well-Being by Collette McAuley and Wendy Rose (Editors)In the context of contemporary politics and economics the idea of the well-being of our children has gotten short shrift indeed.  In the US the combined mantras of "no new taxes" and "government is not the solution, it's the problem" gradually starves governments at all level and thus weakens any coordinated effort to support working parents in caring for children.  The more recent regimes of austerity in the US and the UK have served only to exacerbate the problem. The collection under review is a welcome reminder of the need to re-order priorities with regard to children's lives a
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The Cambridge Companion to Dewey
By Molly Cochran (Editor)
Review by Dina Mendonça, Ph.D. on Tue, Jan 31st 2012.
The Cambridge Companion to Dewey by Molly Cochran (Editor)The extensive reach of Dewey's philosophical work gives this volume an unusual format covering a wide breath of subjects, as the editor of the volume points out. The introduction offers an explanation for the resurgence of interest in Dewey's work, and provides a summary of Dewey's life and philosophical accomplishments. In addition, Cochran shows that Dewey reconstructed several key philosophical concepts and illustrates the insightful nature of his reconstructions with the description of Dewey notion of experience, intelligence and situation. The first chapter "The making of a democratic p
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Thinking with Whitehead
A Free and Wild Creation of Concepts
By Isabelle Stengers
Review by Keith Harris, Ph.D. on Tue, Jan 31st 2012.
Thinking with Whitehead by Isabelle StengersReaders who already have an interest in Whitehead or his Process Philosophy will be most interested in this thorough recapitulation of the evolution of Whitehead's ideas. The original title of this work is Penser avec Whitehead, which gives the infinitive form of the verb as "to think"; but the more active sense of "thinking with" in the English title conveys most appropriately how this book should be approached.  Isabelle Stengers' detailed 550+ page examination of Alfred North Whitehead's philosophical system was published in French in 2002 but was only made available in English in 201
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The Good Book
A Humanist Bible
By A. C. Grayling
Review by Michael Pereira, MA on Tue, Jan 31st 2012.
The Good Book by A. C. GraylingIt is often said that to not believe in some form of deity or not to advocate a specific religious tradition is to 'believe in nothing'. One way to judge A.C. Grayling's 'The Good Book' is as a comprehensive response to this view, by presenting the many complexities that are present in human life, without any reference to deities or the supernatural. The Good Book explores aspects of human life such as love, war and friendship. Grayling examines life in almost every significant aspect. The Good Book is organized into separate books stylized purposely to remind the reader of the King James Eng
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Empathy in the Context of Philosophy
By Lou Agosta
Review by Kimberly Baltzer-Jaray on Tue, Jan 31st 2012.
Empathy in the Context of Philosophy by Lou AgostaWith Empathy in the Context of Philosophy, Lou Agosta seeks to make a philosophical contribution to the debate on what empathy is, a debate that has often taken place mainly in the psychological arena.  While this topic enjoyed its academic hay-day nearly 100 years ago, he tells us discussions about the nature and experience of empathy are making a comeback.  Agosta sees humankind entering a new empathetic age, brought on by such things as discoveries in neurology and discussions in the media about the fitness about Supreme Court judges (the vetting process includes investigating if
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Happy Now?
A Novel
By Katherine Shonk
Review by Pratima Sampat-Mar on Tue, Jan 31st 2012.
Happy Now? by Katherine ShonkWhen you have to re-read the description of a book before writing a review, it's definitely a sign that the book wasn't all that memorable. That sums up my overall impression of Katherine Shonk's Happy Now? The book is about Claire, whose husband commits suicide on Valentine's Day at a party which she wasn't planning to attend. Throughout the book, the reader learns more about Claire, Jay, and their relationship. There's never an "Aha!" moment about anything, which, in my opinion, is realistic. In my (very limited) experiences with suicide, I've never heard of a specific event which led to the
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America in the Forties
By Ronald Allen Goldberg
Review by Bob Lane, MA on Tue, Jan 31st 2012.
America in the Forties by Ronald Allen GoldbergJohn Robert Greene is the editor of the America in the Twentieth Century series of books – each dedicated to a decade of historical events of the twentieth century United States of America. The idea for the series is simple: find historians who can write well and let them present a fact based narrative of each ten year period with a student audience in mind. The authors of books in the series have been chosen for their teaching skills, and one member of the editorial board is a "presently sitting college student". The goal is to produce "a readable, concise, and scholarly series of books
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The Intimates
A Novel
By Ralph Sassone
Review by Amy Ridley on Tue, Jan 31st 2012.
The Intimates by Ralph SassoneRobbie and Maize first meet in high school and feel an instant connection. They lose touch with each other when Robbie goes away to school leaving Maize to navigate their dreadful high school alone. The only thing that keeps her going is her borderline stalker relationship with her guidance counselor. She finds any excuse to go to his office and he appears just as excited to see her. He's trying to prep her for her college interviews which Maize doesn't have much interest in. She is getting horrible advice from her mother and Mr. Jamesley is trying to save her from bombing the interviews. Her
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A Mother's Courage: Talking Back to Autism
DVD
By Fridrik Thor Fridriksson (Director)
Review by Christian Perring on Tue, Jan 31st 2012.
A Mother's Courage: Talking Back to Autism by Fridrik Thor Fridriksson (Director)A Mother's Courage is an odd and mixed documentary.   Its oddness starts with the title. It is a documentary about an Icelandic woman. Margret Dagmar Ericsdottir, who has a young son, Kali,  with severe autism and decides to find out more about it by interviewing experts on autism, meeting other families with autistic children, and taking her son to a Texas center that promotes prompted communication.  So it is a film about autism that promotes a controversial form of treatment, and isn't really about the mother at all.  We do see the perspective of her and her husband
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Practical Ethics
Third Edition
By Peter Singer
Review by Laura Cabrera on Tue, Jan 24th 2012.
Practical Ethics by Peter SingerThirty years ago, Peter Singer wrote the first edition of a book that has come to be considered part of the classical introduction to applied ethics. In keeping pace with current pressing ethical challenges, Singer revised and updated all the chapters for his third edition of Practical Ethics.  This third edition keeps the lucid style and provocative arguments of its predecessors, but with a more up to date perspective into current ethical challenges. This makes Practical ethics not only an ideal text for university courses, but also for anyone who wants to dedicate some serious thinkin
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The Domain of Reasons
By John Skorupski
Review by Dejan Simkovic on Tue, Jan 24th 2012.
The Domain of Reasons by John SkorupskiJohn Skorupski's The Domain of Reasons is a kind of book that is not often seen in what can be described as the contemporary analytical tradition in philosophy. Such qualification is justified by the fact that it is -- in terms of the structure, some of the problems it addresses, its conceptual framework, and its author's ambition -- reminiscent of, for instance, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Fichte's Science of Knowledge, or Hegel's Phenomenology of Spirit or The Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences. The position defended in The Domain of Reasons, however, is very much a product of th
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New Takes in Film-Philosophy
By Havi Carel and Greg Tuck (Editors)
Review by Shara Knight on Tue, Jan 24th 2012.
New Takes in Film-Philosophy by Havi Carel and Greg Tuck (Editors)New Takes in Film-Philosophy is a collection of essays on the philosophy of film which offers an overview of the continuing discussion about whether films can do philosophy and if they are suitable focus for philosophical analysis.  In considering film and philosophy, editors Carel and Tuck pose a philosopher's question:  'are such mass cultural products philosophically productive?'  Each chapter explores what it is about films, rather than other aspects of culture, that makes them of interest and attention.  This book expands on the discipline of film studies as largely in
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Psychiatrist on the Road
Encounters in Healing and Healthcare
By Lawrence H. Climo
Review by Cecile Lawrence, Ph.D., J.D. on Tue, Jan 24th 2012.
Psychiatrist on the Road by Lawrence H. ClimoIf you have an interest in North American Cultural Studies, you are probably familiar with Story Corps.  One could call this collection of interviews  "Story Corps on the inside: video shorts in words" with a very special set of interviewees. At age 65, the author lost his job as an employee of an urban mental health clinic, where he was senior clinical psychiatrist.  Deciding not to retire just then, he contracted with three companies that hire medical personnel to work temporarily in various locations around the U.S. With that the author gets on the road. The word pictures
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The Girl in the Garden
By Kamala Nair
Review by Pratima Sampat-Mar on Tue, Jan 24th 2012.
The Girl in the Garden by Kamala NairThe Girl in the Garden is Kamala Nair's debut novel, and after listening to the 8 CD unabridged audio version, I am looking forward to her next offering. The description on the back of the box, which mentioned secrets and a relationship between mother and daughter, made me want to hear the story. The plot, intricate details, and characters all kept me listening. Rakhee, now a young woman, tells the story about a summer she spent in India with her mother which changed the course of her life. Rakhee is at first reluctant to go to India, never having been there and not wanting to leave her father
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