Reviews for A Guide to the Mind

The average rating for A Guide to the Mind based on 2 reviews is 3 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2010-05-18 00:00:00 Thomas Henry Prager takes a tack in this book that I've been noticing more frequently in non-fiction books. Each chapter ends in a section basically called (to paraphrase) "Who Give A Fuck?"¹ This details the human uses, or potential uses, of the organism being discussed e.g. "In Korea, the deslimed skin of hagfishes is used to make 'eel skin' products such as handbags, shoes, wallets and briefcases" (p. 30). Presumably this is what readers want and therefore how publishers direct writers to approach the material. I find it incredibly distasteful. The idea that I should only be enchanted by the silent beauty of a bioluminescent dinoflagellate because the plankton-based food chain leads to "three hundred thousand jobs along with hundreds of billions of dollars in retail, local, state, and federal tax revenues" (p. 13)² . . . well, I find it difficult to communicate in a review my utter disdain and repulsion.³ The is one of the factors that contributed to my overall dislike of the book. Another is that on the single spread pp. 12-13 there are five - count 'em, five - exclamation marks. Material = 5 Stars Photographs = 4 stars (would have liked more, please) Overall writing = 2 stars Annoyance factor = -4 stars ¹ Actually called "Why They Matter." ² Leading to my most hated quote of the entire book: "Instead of 'Show me the money,' we should yell, 'Show me the fish,' and therefore, 'Show me the plankton!'" (p. 13). SO. MUCH. NO. ³ And yes, I know it's in the title of the book, but I thought this would involve looking at the delicate balance of the biosphere, not looking at the value of kelp in "kelp wraps and mud baths" as part of a "industry" with an "estimated annual value of more than $70 million" (p. 126-27). And definately not flat out stating, "All of the sea's elite athletes [ugh] . . . are worth much more to society alive and abundant rather than dead" (p. 128).

Review # 2 was written on 2015-06-20 00:00:00 Byron Black In a world in which what most people know about science could be nestled comfortably inside a toothpaste cap, Prager joins the ranks of such "popularizers" and "divulgators" of the arcane and mysterious "ologies" as E.O. Wilson, Lewis Thomas, Stephen Jay Gould, and even, in his way, Farley Mowatt. In other words, with writers like these for colleagues, popular-science writers face a bar that is set fairly high. Prager, however, doesn't even bother to stretch. As her title suggests, and as she explains in her introductory chapters, slime turns out to serve a myriad of important functions in marine life: as a defense mechanism, as an aid to reproduction, as an impromptu sleep sack for fish on the open reef. Ocean life, Prager says, is enveloped in slime. Unfortunately, her book is enveloped in it, too, only the slime in Prager's insufferable writing style takes the form of bogs of imbecilic puns; ropes of anemic, anthropomorphizing similes (which she appears to believe are necessary because you'd be too stupid to understand what she was talking about otherwise); and a steady ooze of peepee/caca humor that Prager deploys with Tourette's-like doggedness and which reaches its apex every time she gets to talk about sex (and she talks about sex a lot). If she has to describe the mating habits of the sea urchin, well, she can at least find some way to make the whole thing seem scatological, smutty, and slightly icky. Just as though you were in junior high and she were the kid in the lunch room who could take even the most innocent-sounding word and somehow relate it to sex. As you're reading, you can literally hear Beavis and Butt-Head sniggering in the background: "Heh. Heh-heh. She said 'sperm cloud.' Heh-heh-heh." If this is what it takes to popularize science these days and teach "average" Americans something about the natural world in which we live, I say the Chinese more than deserve to win every single educational contest they challenge us to. (Personal to University of Chicago Press: Ed Ricketts' Between Pacific Tides hasn't been updated and re-issued since 1992; make Ellen Prager return her advance and give us back the "Doc.")