Author: thepassionatereader

I am in awe of the vast knowledge and insights of this well-known soon to be 84 year-old Emeritus Professor at Oxford, famed geneticist and Darwinian scholar. In this, his latest book he expounds on a huge variety of genetic topics from the companion viruses and bacteria to the life cycle of many organisms from viruses to elephants. A recurring theme of the book is the palimpsest of genes defined as the writing over text on top of existing text.

The text is accompanied by startling example photographs, drawings and charts of amazing creatures, large and small. He makes extensive use of the gene’s ability to metaphorically ‘look back’ at its own history to make sense of itself and to predict its future. Several controversial theories are introduced, and his older hypothesis are defended with vigour.

In addition to the 297 pages cited there are 28 pages of Endnotes, a nine page bibliography, and an eleven page index.

Not known for his humility, the author is fond of quoting from his previous books, including The Selfish Gene, The Blind Watchmaker, and The Extended Phenotype. His previous hypotheses are also widely reviewed.

I got lost in some of the very detailed discussion and assertions that seemed a bit tenuous to this naive scientist, but I also must admit that I learned a lot, quite enjoyed most of the book and am even more in awe of the complexity of biology.

Still, not as good as The Selfish Gene or The God Delusion, his fierce defence of atheism, in my opinion. Certainly this book is not for someone who is not interested in biology or science, as it is extremely detailed, and absolutely humourless.

3.8/5

Thanks, The Economist.

Books

This historical novel by the American writer starts from the viewpoint of an eight year old girl in 1489 in regimented China. Being born in the year of the Metal Snake, she aspires to follow the family tradition and becomes a doctor by age 15. Her mother dies of infection because of the widespread practice of binding feet. She is widely scorned by the established extremely misogynous medical establishment

Concubines jockey for position, often with the help of wives, herbal concoctions abound and endless lists have to be memorized all numbered, including Five concepts, Five Depot organs, Seven emotions, Five Fatigues, Four vices, Five Deaths, Four examinations, 28 or 100 different pulses, and Four Quintessential attributes. The Smallpox Plant master visits to supposedly prevent that deadly disease with variolation. There is a Period of Three Letters and Six Etiquettes, Six Pernicious Influences, and the Decoction of Four Gentlemen. At age eight, her betrothal is already settled, seven years hence.

Once she is married, she also gets the most devious hostile controlling mother-in-law imaginable when she gives birth to girls, not the desired boy.

Moxibustion points ( applying herbal heat) to the many acupuncture sites are used to treat many illnesses.

A woman with menstrual problems is assessed by Dr. Tan. “You’re suffering from Spleen qi deficiency and injured Kidney yin caused by taxation from toil, …. This type of deep fatigue can come from too much work or from extreme mental doings like studying too hard.”

The cure is equally confusing. “First, please have the herbalist make you a Decoction to Supplement the Center and Boost Qi.”

In a different setting: “ I’ll start with herbs to end your bleeding and continue the Decoction of Four substances and the Decoction of Two aged ingredients. I’ll supplement the latter with cardamom to regulate your qi,…. and the immature bitter orange to promote healing.”

The intrigue and deviousness of the elite Chinese households is impossible to exaggerate, but Lady Tan was a real physician, mainly treating women and childbirth problems and left copious notes for this author to develop into her novel.

There are literally hundreds of trite Chinese aphorisms that become quite tedious.

This book is soberingly educational, even more-so than the author’s previous The Tea Girl of Hummingbird Lane. But both are so far removed from any science and modern western medicine that I had trouble relating to them.

3.5/5

Thanks, Book Club 2.

An Irish writer provides this delicious story about a Chicago police officer who retires to a decrepit shack in the Irish countryside, only to find that he still needs his detective skills to solve the mystery of a local youth who has gone missing. This occupies more and more of his time with many false leads and colourful local characters, many of them criminals. As well, his past life with the the Chicago Police, a dysfunctional marriage and a distant aloof daughter are gradually revealed in small hints along the way.

300 pages later, the mystery of the missing youth has resulted in many violent confrontations, and although the reader senses that the youth will be found, where and doing what are still mysteries.

There are many graphic features of rural Irish life with abundant often crude humorous conversations in local dialect.

A couple of quotes:

Drunks in a pub discussing a red headed girl: “I wouldn’t say the carpet matches the curtains there.”

“…Cal learned a long time ago never to underestimate the spectacular natural wonder that is people’s stupidity.”

The prose flows beautifully, and the description of the countryside is hauntingly beautiful.

In the last 100 pages, the violence with guns becomes a bit unrealistic, sensational, gratuitous and confusing.

4/5

Thanks, June.

This Scottish environmentalist and head of Our World in Data, has written the most upbeat book on the environment that I have ever read. Loaded with literally hundreds of counterintuitive facts and clear graphs, along with scholarly references, she has me convinced that the world is not doomed. At the same time she does not deny the serious challenges we face with such problems as air pollution, deforestation, food production, climate change, loss of biodiversity, and depletion of fish stocks, but offers safe and effective solutions.

The air we breathe is the cleanest it has been in at least 1000 years and we can do even better with modern technology to capture pollutants at source.

Food production to feed 9OO million people requires better crop yields, distribution and a change in diets with less waste. That requires some judicious use of fertilizers and pesticides, not more land for agriculture.

The Amazon rain forest actually contributes almost nothing to the atmospheric oxygen concentration, and burning stubble to produce land for palm oil production is less of a problem than the substitute production of some other oils including olive oil.

Of the 460 million tons of plastic waste produced annually only a small fraction ends up in the Great Pacific Garbage Patch. Most of that comes from the fishing industry. Much of the waste plastic can be safely stowed in sealed landfill, which is much more economical than trading it around the world or recycling it. Or it may be possible in the future to break it down chemically in an ecologically friendly way.

I occasionally do some volunteer work at a local small-scale ecological farm and research facility that religiously avoids all pesticides, insecticides, weed-killers and fertilizers other than mulch. It claims that it can match or exceed crop yields of industrial farms, but is labour intensive. Perhaps avoiding all fertilizers and pesticides is not really necessary, according to this author.

This is the best book about scientific ecology that I have ever read, bar none. A much more detailed update to Michael Berners-Lee’s great How Bad Are Bananas? The Carbon Footprint of Everything. Deserving of some prize.

5/5

Thanks, Book Browse.

This is the eighth book by the ex-pat Canadian social commentator living in New York, who takes great delight in pointing out the counterintuitive.

Starting and finishing the text he cites the testimony of the now defunct Sacklers in relation to the opioid crisis in the U.S. and does make some counterintuitive points. In between he discusses the apparent tipping point of having a Magic Third of women on corporate boards, the descent of Miami into the capital of Medicare fraud, the problematic recruitment of athletes to Harvard and Georgetown, the homogeneity of Poplar Grove leading to an epidemic of suicides, the superspreaders of Covid, and a variety of other societal problems.

I found some of the associations that he asserts to be tipping points to be contrived, highly speculative and of dubious importance.

Several charts within the text and almost every one of the 29 pages of endnotes are superimposed on the text making it almost impossible to read them clearly, in the ebook version at least. This is obviously the fault of the layout team and not the author.

At one point he seems to claim that Fort Erie, Ontario is larger than nearby Buffalo, when in fact it is about 1/10 the size.

Although I learned a fair bit from reading this book, it is not nearly as good as the original The Tipping Point.

3.5/5

Thanks, Book Bub

This screed is the summation of a lifetime of work as a feminist, now retired from a job as an editor at the Globe and Mail. She apparently also teaches at the Toronto Metropolitan University, known previously as Ryerson.

The continuing problem of bias against and violence to women is carefully documented with a host of examples, some not at all obvious to this white male of priveledge. The evils of nondisclosure clauses are clear, particularly when it involves instances of sexual abuse. A host of quotes and studies vey adequately documents the continuing, major problem including discussion of Miriam Toews « Women Talking. », but does not include Maria Moores equally frightening « Not my Kind Of Mennonite. », an equally frightening book.

The technology of modern tracking developed mainly by misogynous men is used to aid men in abusive relationships. The history of misogynous abuse, particularly by Indiginous men, is often inadequately investigated by white male police until it leads to murder. The lack of knowledge and interest in investment opportunities by women is also perpetuated by male investment brokers and counsellors.

There is at least one error. The first female head of state was Sri Lanka, not Iceland, according to Wikipedia.

With personal and family experience with misogynous abuse, and lots of personal history, I quite enjoyed and learned a lot from reading this book in my continuing efforts to be fair to all women.

4/5

Born in London, Ontario, this author grew up in New Zealand, where this story takes a place, and now lives in Britain. This is not the Birnam Wood of McBeth, but the name of a group of radical socialist environmentalists determined to preserve some portion of the huge real Korowai Park, for eco-friendly farming, and biodiversity. But a knighted owner of a pest control company with a complicated relationship to Birnam Woods, has plans to develop it, and a paranoid American billionaire wants the land to build a self-sustaining, secret doomsday bunker on it. Or at least that is the stated but hush-hush plan. Or is he only interested in the richness of the area in rare earth minerals, or radioactive compounds? None of the plans are straightforward, and everyone is quite prepared to break the law to achieve their goals.

The plot gets extremely complicated with extensive surveillance of everyone by drones, and tracking of phones, and double-crossing lies by almost everyone. I won’t give away the gruesome conclusion of the story except to say that there are LSD trips, multiple casualties, and very circuitous clever coverups.

There are sentences that run on for half a page or more, but the story is realistic and not terribly hard to follow. The bunker story seems to be modelled after the real so-far failed attempts of Peter Thiel of PayPal fame to build one in New Zealand.

This is a damming description of unchecked capitalism at its worst that I quite enjoyed although there is little to admire in the socialist alternative either, at least as depicted here.

4.5/5

Thanks, Mary M.

A now retired Inuit doctor and Air Force Captain from Russell, Ontario, just outside of Ottawa, is recruited to serve as the medical advisor to the Canadian Army medical corps in Bosnia with the NATO peacekeeping mission in 1998. There he documents his daily experiences over 209 days, having previously worked mainly pushing paper at National Defence Headquarters in Ottawa.

As an intoduction to peacekeeping in the aftermath of the genocidal wars in Bosnia and Kosovo, this is a masterpiece of information and a tribute to Canadian soldiers. His personal hardships and his enormous humanitarian contributions to the local residents are exemplary. The daily activities provide ample opportunities for dry humour on almost every page. He does not hesitate to mock the Canadian Armed Forces for their inefficiency, waste, and excessive beaucracy.

He seems be obsessed with running long distances and several sports. He seems a little excessively humble and self-depricating.

One thing that turned me off a bit was his religiosity, frequently ending the account of daily activities with either a short prayer or a thank you to God for what his colleagues and not God had accomplished that day.

There are three pages of acronyms that the armed forces are fond of using. A reference map of this troubled part of the world with the many towns visited would have been helpful.

I quite enjoyed this account and will recommend it to a very senior military officer who also served abroad.

3.6/5

Thanks, Bob.

No one recommended this 1973 book to me. I bought it simply because it was referenced in so many books that I have read that I was curious as to its details. It was written by a late American cultural anthropologist. The 2023 edition I bought includes a lengthy preface by Brian Greene, the original Preface, and an Introduction.

A deep dive into classical Freudian psychoanalytic theory is combined with existential philosophy in the first chapters; the book was written when Freudian psychoanalysis was very popular. Then he argues that Kierkegaard’s theology, which I have never been able to fully understand, is psychoanalytic in nature.

The chapter on group psychology and transference is interesting but only peripherally related to the topic of the title. But it helped me to at least partially understand the psychological dynamics within the current Republican Party in the United States.

There is the statement that Freud claimed to have a secret death wish for his younger brother when he himself was only 19 months old. Perhaps not absurd to assert, but certainly absurd to believe.

Quoting a wide variety of supposed experts, the author waxes eloquent on an equally wide variety of subjects from loss of instincts in humans, and all kinds of mental illness including schizophrenia and sexual perversions. If there is a unifying theme, it must be his admiration for Freud. But to claim that this is science is almost laughable.

I hoped that this book would help me understand why many old folk undertake irrational enterprises such as starting a new business or taking up farming as though they believed they personally would never die, in spite of all the evidence around them. And there is a lot of discussion of the fear of dying, but little about the actual denial of the inevitable.

Some quotes may help you understand the opaque vagueness of this book.

“ Schizophrenia is the limiting test case for the theory of character and reality: the failure to build the defendable character defences allows the true nature of reality to appear to man.”

“…what was need was a framework into which to put the corpus of psychoanalytic insight, so that the truth of it could emerge clearly and unambiguously, free of the 19th century reductionism, instinctivism, and biologism that Freud fettered it with.”

This book won the Pulitzer Prize in 1974, so many readers must have appreciated it. But for this reader, it was just wordy, dry, profoundly confusing, and dissapointing. I only persisted because I bought it rather than borrowing it and I hoped to find some gem that I could quote and failed.

1.0/5

The Life Of Herod The Great. Zora Neal Hurston. 2025. 290 Pages. (Ebook.).

This novel by the late well- known Black American writer was not completed when she died in 1960. But someone thought it was worthy and it was then published earlier this year. There is also a long and confusing detailed historical perspective that seems designed to make prove that it is in fact an accurate historical novel.

The plot is complex with young and handsome Herod competing with the cruel Hezekiah to be governer of Galilee for the Romans when we first meet him. He is the son of Antipater, procurator of Palestine, and brother of Phaseus, the governer of Jerusalem. They all appear to be under the control of Sextus Caesar, president of Syria, who in turn reports to Julius Caesar. And all of them become the enemies of the weak but scheming titular King and High Priest. Keeping these relationship straight proved to be a bit of a challenge for me. But then there are dozens more characters, many of them historical and some perhaps mythical.The king forces Herod to stand trial in the Sanhedrin where Herod prevails and a soldier moons the Sanhedrin.

The boundaries of both Israel and what counts as a Jew seem a bit fuzzy. Malicus then plots to kill Antipatrer following the assignation of Julius Caesar by Brutus. The bisexuality of Anthony and many others was widely accepted in the ancient world, to Herod’s disgust.

The plot gets even more complex with multiple heroic battles. Apart from perfidious and greedy Cleopatra, women are mostly servants or slaves, or used as sexual indulgences as concubines, but worth fighting for when threatened with mass rape. When Herod visits Rome, Mark Anthony appoints him as king of Judea, but Cleopatra and his mother-in-law plot to betray him, feeding lies to Mark Anthony.

If one ignores the gleeful parading of the heads of his enemies through the streets, and the execution of his young wife, and then his mother-in-law, Herod seems almost too good to be true.

The book ends with the natural death of Herod the Great, without any mention of any encounter with Jesus. Indeed, the time lines don’t seem to fit and in the epilogue it appears that many other scholars of Ancient Rome besides Hurston also do not believe that their times ever overlapped, and it is difficult to believe that Herod would have condemned a fellow Essene.

A reference map or two with borders and cities mentioned in the text, as they applied at the time would help those of us who are geographically challenged.

This is a dense book with many plots to attain power and prevalent devious backstabbing by all the characters, but dramatically details the pervasive cruelty of the era. It may be of great interest to dedicated scholars of Ancient Rome, but I suspect it will not become a best seller.

2.5/5

Thanks, The New Yorker.

After I wrote the review of The Old Man and the Sea, my wife pointed out that it involved all kinds of symbolism and said she loved it. I missed this completely but I am not convinced that all of it was intended by Hemingway, and readers may read more into it than he ever intended. So much for my literal way of interpreting what I thought of as a simple fishing tale.

The Old Man and the Sea. Ernest Hemingway. 1952. 89 Pages. (Paperback.).

Another short old novel that is on the list for book club discussion; this one by the late famous award-winning Ernest Hemingway.

An old fisherman leaves Havana alone on a skiff, travels further out to sea than ever before, after a prolonged bout of catching nothing and with great effort captures an18- foot marlin. On the return trip, sharks devour it as it is latched on to the skiff. The old man suffers many physical and mental injuries in the process, constantly talks to himself, and survives on raw fish.

Even though I have fished for years, including deep sea fishing for marlin, I found the details of his fishing gear and its deployment to be very confusing, but it introduced me to Hemingway’s style. I won’t be reading more of him.

2.5/5

Thanks, Din.

Pearce Oysters. Joselyn Takacs. 2024. 355 Pages. (Hardcover.).

This Portland, Oregon’s debut novel is set on the Louisiana coastline in the immediate wake of the Deepwater Horizon massive oil spill of April, 2009. The effect on the family Pearce Oyster farm creates many conflicts as it slowly dismantles it entirely.

The Pearce family consists largely of Jordan, his widowed mother, May, and his brother Bennie. There are endless conflicts within and beyond the family as the oil spill, the toxic dispersant, and the new admixture of fresh water with salt water slowly kills off the oyster beds. British Petroleum is depicted as greedy, incompetent and deceptive. The Louisiana government is also portrayed as incompetent and uncaring.

There is a lot of bed-hopping, including gay love, but it is not described in a vulgar way. There is also a lot of foul language, mostly in the dialogue of the people of limited education, that makes it seem somehow more appropriate. There is also a bit more self pity and self doubt in almost all of the characters than seems realistic or necessary.

This book is currently the choice of the Western University Alumni Association Book Club which will no doubt study it in sections over months and dissect it in more detail than would most casual readers including myself.

I enjoyed this very well written book, which is a powerful indictment of the fossil fuel industry specifically, and of unregulated rampant capitalism more generally.

4/5

Thanks, Western University Alumni Book Club.

Brain Worms. Albert Driedger. 2024. 276 Pages. (Paperback.).

Full disclosure. The author is a dear friend, a former colleague, and and a brilliant scientist whom I have long admired. When he recently related that he had published a book, I immediately ordered it. In these 94 short essays on a wide variety of scientific subjects, his vast knowledge shines though in mostly easy-to-understand plain language.

For example, Cleopatra’s goiter contributed to what what was considered to be beautiful about her. Bees keep track of  time and solve  quadratic equations. The Toxoplasma parasite only reproduces in the gut of felines, but when it infects rodent’s brains, they loose their fear of felines and run up to them to present an easy meal. (Hence the title.) Ockham’s razor is  invoked twice and explained as to its name. Waste management, Paul Ehrlich’s contribution, dreams, other hominids, polite discourse, origins of life,  astrobiology, small nuclear reactors, nutrition, and climate change are all discussed in these short essays.

Although Al and I first met in church, and the evolution of his thinking about religion, abortion, homosexuality and so much more, in many ways mimics mine, he is much more scientific, experienced and convincing than I could ever hope to be. We evolved to similar ways of thinking about the world, but never discussed these issues in any detail. 

If one is not interested in the collisions of massive black holes of infinite density and zero volume, or the nature of dark matter and dark energy just skip those essays. There are many others. 

A couple selected quotes.

On the World Wide Web: «  The ability to hurl invective from behind the barrier of autonomy, seems, for most commentators, to be too much to resist »

« It is an advantage of a long life, that one is afforded the opporunity to change of mind… »

I am in awe of the vast knowledge conveyed in this book, and I am sure it is not just because I have been priveledged to know the author. 

4.7/5

For me this was a reread, having read this classic decades ago, (and forgotten most of the details). It is set in Paris and London, before and during the French Revolution of 1789-99, and is to be discussed at an upcoming book club meeting.

The intricate plot with dozens of characters is loaded with tragedy, loss, and violence and the writing is flawless and smooth although wordy.

I had difficulty keeping the characters and the time line straight. The 45 named chapters in three parts are not dated.

It would be very inappropriate and arrogant for me to suggest improvements to Mr. Dickens, but for producers of modern editions, I would suggest two things. Rather than a long introduction and an equally long afterword, a chronology line with major political events on one side and major character events on the other would be helpful. Second, a list of major characters that readers could refer to would also reduce the confusion. I doubt that 18th century readers were less prone to confuse characters than 20th century ones. But I am willing to consider that most readers may be better able to keep characters and time lines straight than I am with my addled aging brain.

3.5/5

This Madrid philosopher delves into animal (and plant) behavior to try to understand what they understand about death. Careful to avoid anthropomorhizing, she provides documentation of a vast array of sometimes very bizarre and puzzling behavior in an equally vast variety of species.

The difference between stereotypical and cognitive reactions to death are carefully outlined and she concludes that many species are capable of processing concepts of death to varying degrees even if they do so in a very different way than we do. Cognition, experience and emotion become the mainstays in the erudite study of this phenomenon, known as comparative thanatology, hardly a crowded field.

The possum is not the only species to play dead when threatened and it cools, goes limp and secretes putrescine and cadaverine to detract from its attractiveness to predators.

Much of the documentation involves primates, but insects and even Venus fly traps are included.

The fuzzy black and white photographs accompanying the text are not very helpful. There is just enough morbid humor to keep me interested, although overall the extreme violence of most or nature is what is emphasized.

3.5/5

Thanks, The New Yorker.

This American/British novelist’s old lengthy classic is scheduled for discussion at an upcoming William’s Court 2 book club meeting. The above pagination does not include a 15 page introduction by Peter Washington nor a 12 page chronology of the lives of the author and his compatriots, but does include a long preface by the author.

Reflecting the values and lifestyles of the rich in both America and Britain, in the 1860s, not unlike the author, the heroine is Isabel Archer, a young preternaturally beautiful American, transported to Britain where she faces several marriage prospects, with endless scheming and intrigue by relatives and friends.

Wandering around European capitals and North Africa, and site of interest, staying at grand palaces and mansions with many sevants, the protagonists muse endlessly about their own relationships and what they want out of life, without any consideration of the larger issues of the prolétariat. Chance encounters within these wanderings include those with old potential mates, creating endless conflicts, and indecisional self analyses. In the end, Isabel enriched from her uncle’s generosity, opts for a relatively poor Italian widower, much to the consternation of many friends and relatives, and before long, to her own regret.

To be fair, there are no controversial political opinions, no explicit sex (there are references to ‘making love’ but it is not clear that this is as the term is now used), absolutely no science, no violence and no deep philosophy. And no humour. What there is, is the superficial banal life of the leisure class with all their insincere flatteries and multipage ruminations, meaningless trivial self analyses and veiled disagreements, with far too many exclamation marks! No one says what they mean.

A longstanding marital infidelity, and a suprizing case, not of disputed paternity, but in the age of high maternal mortality, an unsuspected maternity, is revealed in the last few chapters.

I will be interested to hear what someone in the book club liked about this book, which to me was was an unadorned wordy piece of nonsensical drivel.

1.0/5

I chose this Toronto man’s novel almost at random from the William’s Court lending library, with nothing else appealing on my list then being available. Not a good choice.

Two seemingly successful historians and university teachers at an unspecified institution in the early 21st century marry and have a young son. But the man tries to deal with a secret sleep disorder with medication, endangering his son’s life and leading to bitter acrimony with his wife, then a bitter divorce and custody battle. His abuses escalate and lead to his failure to advance in his academic career, centred on the history of Ancient Rome.

Chapters are titled after the drugs he uses and abuses to treat his disorder, or the guns he plays with. In places, it becomes impossible to know what is real and what is the effect of the drugs and sleeplessness on his brain. He moves to Montreal, then on sabattical to some unspecified American city, and finally to a very violent Ostia Antica in Italy. His obsession with handguns becomes confusing.

There is abundant foul language and unrealistic sexual encounters with almost any kind of perversion you could think of, explicitly described. At the end, it is not clear what will happen to him, as the novel simply stops on the streets of Ostia Antica, with him captive to kids with guns.

When will novelists learn the difference between arteries and veins? «…blood pumped through his veins. »

I cannot recommend this trashy disjointed book.

1/5

A very short book set in 1985 in the author’s native Ireland, this story features Bill Furlong, whose father was unknown and who was raised by relatives. He becomes a family man with a coal delivery business including to the notorious Madeline Laundries of the Catholic Church. There, his contientious help for the exploited girls he encounters leads to conflict with his own wife and daughters and a loss of his Catholic faith.

The characters are easy to follow and realistic and the writing is in keeping with aspects of historical facts that need to be publicized.

4.5/5

Thanks, The Atlantic.

In this British neurologist’s book, the first of the seven deadly sins he deals with is Wrath. There are apparently endless causes, some genetic, some environmental, and many unknown. There are also many studies quoted that confuse correlation with cause, including the finger length ratio. But there are few suggestions on how to modify aggression. And we once again meet the old standby Phineas Gage. «In prisoners, the severity of psychopathy correlates most strongly with loss of grey matter in the temporal lobes and limbic systems. » Dare I ask what came first?

The second deadly sin, gluttony, is introduced with examples including Prader-Walli syndrome, grizzly bears, and the increasing use of fecal transplants to modify the gut biome. There is evidence that obesity is a social diseases spread, not solely explained by genetic factors or by viruses and that GLP I and lectin levels are critical in modifying the obesity epidemic, particularly as it relates to prenatal exposure. One begins to see that the author is never going to blame any individual for their problems, a prerequisite for the final chapter.

In the 50 page chapter on Lust, there are many theories about mate selection, the diffences between men and women, the effects of some drugs, and various paraphilias, but few concrete conclusions. By now it seems certain that he will argue in the final chapter that free will does not exist. «The division between the mind and the brain is grey, perhaps even nonexistent. »

In the short chapter on Envy, he notes how the meaning of the word has changed over time to become more benign, and makes the hairsplitting distinction between envy and jealousy.

In Sloth, a detailed anatomical picture of the devastation of Huntington’s chorea is presented as well as the effects of traumatic brain injuries, and sloth is equated with apathy. Building to his conclusion about free will, he states flatly: «Our brains and mind are the same thing. »

In Greed, he acknowledges that there are no known neuropathological correlates but goes on to speculate for 15 pages about both the good and evil aspects of greed.

In the last chapter of sins, Pride is distinguished from hubris and there are endless inevitably undergraduate elaborative psychological studies to draw iffy conclusions.

Not to disappoint, the concluding chapter named Free Will, does indeed conclude that it may not exist. But then in a wordy work around he manages to align himself with the so-called compatiblists like the philosopher Daniel Dennett who through mental gymnastics that I can’t follow, maintains a belief in right and wrong, good and evil, even in the face of a deterministic universe. As a rank amateur, I have no opinion about the existence of free will, but I firmly believe that we should live our day-to-day lives as though it exists.

This is yet another deep dive into the world of neuroanatomy and neurochemistry that will be of interest to a select few readers.

3.5/5

Thanks, Goodreads.