The Scientific Attitude
Defending Science from Denial, Fraud, and Pseudoscience
By Lee McIntyre
Review by Maura Pilotti, Ph.D. on Tue, Aug 6th 2019. |  | Imagine that you are an archeologist who has stumbled upon a strangely shaped artifact on the ground while surveying an area for potential excavation. You pick it up, and, with growing curiosity and perhaps even excitement, you take it to your lab. There, you use a magnifying glass or some other probing tool to methodically examine it. You also rely on your knowledge of the extant literature to understand its nature, albeit the available information does not help you much since different views exist of its likely properties. In the end, you generate your interpretation after having considered
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Ways of Hearing
By Damon Krukowski
Review by Lars Aagaard-Mogensen on Tue, Jul 30th 2019. | Ways of Hearing is a misleading title, at least it misled this reader to expect it to do with hearing, the sense, the faculty humans possess. And it is marketed in the category LCSH: Music -- social aspects. Nor is it about music as such, but only about "folk-rock" as told by one of its performers. The aspects are mainly about Krukowski's views of the production of that in his experience. Offered to be a pendant to, inspired by, John Berger's Ways of Seeing, be that as it may, neither in any way a match for Nelson Goodman's Ways of Worldmaking. In fact, this very slim paperback
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Never Home Alone
From Microbes to Millipedes, Camel Crickets, and Honeybees, the Natural History of Where We Live
By Rob Dunn
Review by Christian Perring on Tue, Jul 23rd 2019. |  | Apparently some readers of Never Home Alone find it alarming. Reviews in the New York Times and Washington Post talk about the horror of finding out that we have bacteria and bugs not just all over our houses but even in our bodies. But I found the book reassuring. This may because I am one of those people who find the activity of house cleaning tiresome and unnecessary except for special occasions such as when trying to impress visitors. The project of getting one's house clean and free of anything alien has always seemed a lost cause, and mostly a waste of time. I embrace the idea
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Dementia Reimagined
Building a Life of Joy and Dignity from Beginning to End
By Tia Powell
Review by Christian Perring on Tue, Jul 16th 2019. | Tia Powell's book on dementia is important and useful. She is a doctor, an academic, and someone who has a great deal of experience with dementia herself, and her book is a discussion of how to live with the expectation we will or might develop dementia, how to behave with people who have dementia, and what policies we should adopt regarding dementia. Both her grandmother and mother had dementia, and she says she expects to develop dementia herself. She has thought a great deal about both the medical aspects and the personal aspects. She sets out some of the science of dementia and the history
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The Diversity Delusion
How Race and Gender Pandering Corrupt the University and Undermine Our Culture
By Heather Mac Donald
Review by Christian Perring on Tue, Jul 9th 2019. |  | There is a lot to like in Heather Mac Donald's The Diversity Delusion. She is a punchy writer who cuts through nonsense with funny put downs. She presents a scathing critique of modern US universities, focusing on affirmative action, requirements that student and faculty populations be diverse, sexual assault policies, required education on sexual correctness, multicultural requirements, gender balance in the curriculum, the huge administrative bloat in higher education, and the departure from the traditional conception of knowledge and the importance of the Western canon. There are many
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How to Do Nothing
Resisting the Attention Economy
By Jenny Odell
Review by John Mullen on Tue, Jul 9th 2019. | First things first. This book is not about how to do nothing, as the author is at pains to point out on several occasions. It's about how to stop doing something, to wit, falling victim to the "attention economy." What attracted me to the book was the promise of an analysis with recommendations of the threats of universal digitalization in general and social media in particular. That expectation was fulfilled. The author has an impressive background as a Stanford University faculty member and a working artist-in-residence at such places as a police department, a dump, and internet archive
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White Privilege Unmasked
How to be a Part of the Solution
By Judy Ryde
Review by Kaolin on Tue, Jul 2nd 2019. |  | Ryde speaks to her readers through many voices: The psychotherapist, educator, white woman, white child, global asylum seeker advocate and trauma specialist (Director for Trauma Foundation South West (TFSW), Bath Centre for Psychotherapy and Counseling (BCPC) and the Centre of Supervision and Team Development, Bath, UK.
Why refer to Ryde's career? Well, in part because of her expertise in the field of cross-cultural relations but also because the whiteness aspect of her identity with the privilege that has accompanied her on her own journey remained a constant theme throughout her book w
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The Way We Eat Now
How the Food Revolution Has Transformed Our Lives, Our Bodies, and Our World
By Bee Wilson
Review by Christian Perring on Tue, Jun 4th 2019. | The Way We Eat Now takes a sociological and anthropological approach to trends in modern eating. Bee Wilson, a British food writer who performs the audiobook version of her book herself, combines a personal approach with an awareness of modern culture and recent scholarship. There is a 16 page bibliography and 20 pages of notes. It is a book that could be used in an undergraduate course and might spark the interest of students.
Wilson addresses a variety of aspects of modern food, and there's a great deal of overlap between chapters. The central theme comes from the Nutrition T
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