Death in the Classroom Writing About Love and Loss By Jeffrey Berman Review by Joshua Gidding, Ph.D. on Tue, Jun 30th 2009.
In the Spring semester of 2006, at the State University of New York at Albany, English professor Jeffrey Berman taught an undergraduate course entitled "Love and Loss in Literature and Life". Death in the Classroom: Writing about Love and Loss is the story of that course, which turned out to be an unforgettable adventure for both students and instructor. But the book tells another story as well: how Berman used the course to help him grieve the death of his wife Barbara, two years earlier, from pancreatic cancer. Indeed, it was Barbara's death that gave rise to the idea of th Click here to read the full review!
Death and Character Further Reflections on Hume By Annette C. Baier Review by Michael Funk Deckard, Ph.D. on Tue, Jun 30th 2009.
Death and Character might have more accurately been entitled Impressions and Vivacity. Although death and character are discussed, the majority of this book is dedicated to "more difficult and abstruse" claims concerning Hume's epistemology. For a philosopher such as Annette Baier who has dedicated so much of her work to the importance of ethics, passions, character, and women the concentration on metaphors such as "impressions" (Hume's technical term for the immediacy of perception) and their "force and vivacity" seems like a deviation. While her discussion covers the breadth of Hume's oeuvre Click here to read the full review!
Between Two Worlds A Reading of Descartes's Meditations By John Carriero Review by Michael Pereira, MA on Tue, Jun 30th 2009.
The subject matter of Between Two Worlds is a 're-reading' of Descartes' Meditations. Carriero main intention is to show how Descartes was reacting against some tenets of scholastic philosophy throughout the Meditations. Carriero reads Descartes' Meditations through the context scholastic orthodoxies that originate from Aquinas and Aristotle, the kind of philosophical notions taught as 'Dogma' during Descartes' own philosophical education. Carriero makes the bold claim that Descartes' Meditations was a work about the nature of knowledge, reality and God. This claim is bold because a mass Click here to read the full review!
Pretty Is What Changes By Jessica Queller Review by Jodi Forschmiedt on Tue, Jun 30th 2009.
In Jessica Queller's memoir, we follow the author as she watches her mother survive breast cancer but succumb to an agonizing death from ovarian cancer. Queller doesn't flinch as she describes exactly what devastation the disease wreaks upon her mother's body and spirit, as well as the inerasable trauma it causes everyone around her.
So when Queller tests positive for the BRCA gene mutation (which confers an 87% chance of breast cancer and a 44% chance of ovarian cancer), she knows exactly what that means, and so does the reader.
The central conflict of the story: Queller's best bet fo Click here to read the full review!
The Hedgehog's Dilemma A Tale of Obsession, Nostalgia, and the World's Most Charming Mammal By Hugh Warwick Review by Mary Hrovat on Tue, Jun 30th 2009.
This delightful, gentle book is an enjoyable read, good for armchair naturalists and anyone interested in how humans interact with nature. Warwick is an environmental writer and photographer, and the book is essentially a topical memoir of his experiences with the hedgehog, a spiny brown mammal, and an essay on our relationship with hedgehogs and with nature. He gives entertaining descriptions of how hedgehogs live, the different hedgehog species, and current research, including some in which he participated. For example, he describes a project that examined the survival rate in the wild of ab Click here to read the full review!
The Silent Boy By Lois Lowry Review by Christian Perring on Tue, Jun 30th 2009.
This book for children about 10-13 is set at the start of the twentieth century in rural New England. Katy, 7 years old at the start of the story, is the daughter of the town doctor, so she is one of the more privileged and educated children around. They have several people working in the family house, and when her mother gets pregnant, they hire a new girl, Peggy. Peggy has a brother, 13-year-old Jacob, who does not speak, but loves animals. He is the silent boy of the title, and people say his is "touched." He walks long distances from one house to another, and Click here to read the full review!
Teen Television Essays on Programming and Fandom By Sharon Marie Ross and Louisa Stein (Editors) Review by Samin Khan on Tue, Jun 30th 2009.
Teen Television deals with TV watching among teens, some preconceptions of understanding teen television, teen culture, thinking and behavior. In this book Sharon Marie Ross has edited essays on the generation, understanding and effects of TV on teenagers. This book consists of three parts: deals with the industrial context of teen television. It explains the manifestations of televisual programming from different aspects. The works of Warner Brothers (WB), Fox studios, and the N network have affected the teens in different ways. It has also thrown light on the development of the televisi Click here to read the full review!
Stranded I've come from a plane that crashed on the mountains By Gonzalo Arijon (Director) Review by Christian Perring on Tue, Jun 30th 2009.
The story of the team of young rugby players from Uruguay and some friends and family whose plane crashed in the Andes is familiar enough, having been already described in a book and a Hollywood movie, Alive. There were 45 passengers on the plane, and 29 survived the initial crash, only 6 of them injured. But the rescue efforts didn't find the plane, and the survivors were on their own in terrible conditions. Another 13 of them died before they were rescued, 72 days after the crash. They survived by eating what food was left on the plane, and by eating the flesh and bon Click here to read the full review!
True Believer By Virginia Euwer Wolff Review by Amy Ridley on Tue, Jun 30th 2009.
Fifteen year old LaVaughn is studying hard to get good grades so she can get into college. Her mother constantly reminds her that she should not get sidetracked from her studies by boys the way some of her friends have. LaVaughn wants to make sure that she stays focused so all her mom’s hard work to be able to afford college is not wasted. The one thing that could derail all of her hard-work is the arrival of her childhood friend Jody, who never looked this gorgeous before he moved away. He is very dedicated to his swimming so that he can get an athletic scholarship but LaVaughn plans on Click here to read the full review!
High Hopes By Mike Leigh (Director) Review by Christian Perring on Tue, Jun 30th 2009.
High Hopes is a mid-way in Mike Leigh's career, made 11 years after his play Abigail's Party. It's a wonderful film, using Leigh's distinctive directorial style with semi-improvised scenes. The central figures are Cyril and Shirley. They are warm and loving, but there's some tension between them because she wants children and he does not. Yet compared to their relatives and his mother's neighbor, as well as a stranger who knocks on their door, they are paragons of reasonableness. Everyone else is very strange and dysfunctional. It's set in Margaret Thatcher' Click here to read the full review!
Relentless A Novel By Dean Koontz Review by Robert Cheeks on Tue, Jun 30th 2009.
Dean Koontz's latest offering, Relentless: A Novel, continues the author on a familiar trajectory; an existential, "restless movement" toward the transcendent and all that that entails. Koontz seeks nothing less than to recover the tension of existence lost during the Enlightenment, restore truth and order, and recapture the symbols lost when the "new doctrines" reduced the world to technology, revolution and world-immanent consciousness.
As a novelist/poet/philosopher Koontz is ideally suited to succeed in his project, for it is the writer (and the musician) as artist that "rejects t Click here to read the full review!
Addiction A Disorder of Choice By Gene M. Heyman Review by Christian Perring on Tue, Jun 23rd 2009.
Gene Heyman's Addiction: A Disorder of Choice explores similar themes as Jeffrey Schaler's more didactic Addiction is a Choice (Open Court, 2000), and Herbert Fingarette's more philosophical Heavy Drinking: The Myth of Alcoholism as a Disease (University of California Press, 1988). Yet Heyman refers to neither of these books, making his own independent argument instead. Heyman's position is relatively nuanced, and is not an indictment of all current approaches to understanding addiction and its treatment. In an atmosphere where the main view of addiction is that it is very mu Click here to read the full review!
British researcher Irving Kirsch and his colleagues conducted an extensive meta-analysis of published research materials on anti-depressant medications. Their findings were published in 2008 under the title "Initial Severity and Antidepressant Benefits: A Meta-Analysis of Data Submitted to the Food and Drug Administration." You can find it on line at http://www.plosmedicine.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pmed.0050045
A brief overview of their method and conclusion states the following: "The researchers obtained data on all the clinical trials submitted to the FDA Click here to read the full review!
The book under review is part of the "Cambridge Introductions to Literature" series, which aim at comprehensively introducing students to key topics and authors. However, these introductions are also directed to readers who want to "broaden their understanding of the books and authors they enjoy." In this respect, this introductory volume, written by Lisa Downing, combines well these two objectives. On the one hand, it provides a detailed introduction to Foucault's major works, analyzing critically most of his key concepts, such as subjectivity, discourse and power. While, on the other hand, i Click here to read the full review!
Bulimics on Bulimia By Maria Stavrou Review by Mirko Daniel Garasic on Tue, Jun 23rd 2009.
Bulimics on Bulimia is a collection of witness's stories directly written by women experiencing Bulimia in different stages of their lives. Stavrou acknowledges the fact that eating disorders increasingly affect males as well, but no volunteers from the "strong gender" were ready to give a direct testimony of their illness. This secondary aspect, underscored in the Introduction, should perhaps help the reader realize the level of difficulty that individuals experiencing Bulimia have to face when forced to confront their illness. As stated by the editor herself, this volume was inspired by the Click here to read the full review!
Welcome to MHN's unique book review site Metapsychology.
We feature over 4900 in-depth reviews of a wide range of books and DVDs written by our reviewers from many backgrounds and perspectives.
We update our front page weekly and add more than fifty new reviews each month. Our editor is Christian Perring, PhD. To contact him, use the form available here.
Can't remember our URL? Access our reviews directly via 'metapsychology.net'
You can comment on some of the reviews on Metapsychology at our Blog or become a Metapsychology fan on Facebook.
We receive a commission for books purchased through this site, which helps fund future reviews & Metapsychology's continuing growth. We thank you for your support!
Join our e-mail list!:Metapsychology New Review Announcements: Sent out monthly, these announcements list our recent reviews. To subscribe, click here.
Interested in becoming a book reviewer for Metapsychology? Currently, we especially need thoughtful reviewers for books in fiction, self-help and popular psychology. To apply, write to our editor.
