A dense, challenging work, drawing on philosophy, the cognitive sciences and the histories of science, medicine and...
A scholarly examination of the persistence throughout history of thinking that personality and body type are linked to the presence in the body of four “humours.”
Warm moist blood; cold, moist phlegm; warm, dry yellow bile; and cold, dry black bile were the humours identified by ancient Greeks, most famously the physician Hippocrates. The system he formulated was spread beyond Greece by Galen, a Roman physician and scholar living in Asia Minor in the first century. Galen’s writings were preserved in the Arab world and then translated by Christian monks during the Middle Ages. As the medical philosophy of ancient Greece was adopted in the West, the humoural tradition guided medical practice and provided a sense of self-understanding. Tracing the history of ideas about the relation between mind and body from ancient Greece to the present day, Arikha shows how the idea of humoural balance offered not just medical guidance but moral guidance. By living a balanced life, people could control their passions, their bodies, their fate. This system linking moral vigor and physical health also contained elements of astrology and magic, helping to explain how material humours could affect an immaterial soul. Just as the old humours provided useful images for understanding our insides and our tempers, the author suggests, their contemporary equivalents—hormones, enzymes, neurotransmitters, etc.—provide a partial picture of the same psychological and physical realities. Scientists are still struggling to bridge the gap between what is known and what is not known about the body, the brain and the mind. As Arikha puts it, the humoural system reminds us that the best scientists and doctors are those who recognize how little they know; its history is “the underside of our present perplexities.”
A dense, challenging work, drawing on philosophy, the cognitive sciences and the histories of science, medicine and psychology.Pub Date: June 1, 2007
ISBN: 978-0-06-073116-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ecco/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2007
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.
The legendary booze-addled metal rocker turned reality-TV star comes clean in his tell-all autobiography.
Although brought up in the bleak British factory town of Aston, John “Ozzy” Osbourne’s tragicomic rags-to-riches tale is somehow quintessentially American. It’s an epic dream/nightmare that takes him from Winson Green prison in 1966 to a presidential dinner with George W. Bush in 2004. Tracing his adult life from petty thief and slaughterhouse worker to rock star, Osbourne’s first-person slang-and-expletive-driven style comes off like he’s casually relating his story while knocking back pints at the pub. “What you read here,” he writes, “is what dribbled out of the jelly I call my brain when I asked it for my life story.” During the late 1960s his transformation from inept shoplifter to notorious Black Sabbath frontman was unlikely enough. In fact, the band got its first paying gigs by waiting outside concert venues hoping the regularly scheduled act wouldn’t show. After a few years, Osbourne and his bandmates were touring America and becoming millionaires from their riff-heavy doom music. As expected, with success came personal excess and inevitable alienation from the other members of the group. But as a solo performer, Osbourne’s predilection for guns, drink, drugs, near-death experiences, cruelty to animals and relieving himself in public soon became the stuff of legend. His most infamous exploits—biting the head off a bat and accidentally urinating on the Alamo—are addressed, but they seem tame compared to other dark moments of his checkered past: nearly killing his wife Sharon during an alcohol-induced blackout, waking up after a bender in the middle of a busy highway, burning down his backyard, etc. Osbourne is confessional to a fault, jeopardizing his demonic-rocker reputation with glib remarks about his love for Paul McCartney and Robin Williams. The most distinguishing feature of the book is the staggering chapter-by-chapter accumulation of drunken mishaps, bodily dysfunctions and drug-induced mayhem over a 40-plus-year career—a résumé of anti-social atrocities comparable to any of rock ’n’ roll’s most reckless outlaws.
An autobiography as toxic and addictive as any drug its author has ever ingested.Pub Date: Jan. 25, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-446-56989-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Grand Central Publishing
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2009
IN THE NEWS
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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