Science & Technology

Audible carries a number of books on neuroscience, neuroplasticity and the like. I read everyone I come across and so I joined Macknik, Martinez-Conde, and Blakeslee in "Sleights of Mind". While it reveals some of the cognitive and perceptual aspects of illusions, it makes many applications to everyday life as well. This book opens the listener to the world in unexpected ways. For example, the authors point out that painting is magic on canvass. They make the point that deceptions originating in our own perceptual spheres are always readily at hand – when known and when not known. Using magic as the common thread throughout, the authors inform at every turn. If you are interested in magic this is wonderful. If you are interested in perception, it is very informative. If you have given perception, memory, and cognition dissonance little or no thought, do it now. Well written and wonderfully read by Lloyd James.

I try to read in unfamiliar areas every week and so I looked to "The Day We Found the Universe" and was not really disappointed. I further seek out books that are well written and read as well as informative. This book met those expectation.

In this volume Marcia Bartusiak has done an exceptional service by making this scientific story available to general readers. Her section dealing with problems of positivism in research were refreshing.

This book has enabled me to understand the contributions of Einstein, Harlow Shapely, Hubble and others to the understanding of our universe, its size and significance. Sections on Hubble were very interesting. Pages on how Einstein developed his theoretical perspective was warming. All of these players become real and human in the reading.

Readers who need to be entertained to maintain interest might be a little disappointed in this volume, however. The prose is wonderful, but will not carry the reader along on its own. Readers and listeners alike will need to concentrate or they will not benefit. Those without any background will, perhaps, not understand everything covered. There is a lot here to benefit the novice reader coming to this topic with an open mind and a the willingness to "listen up."

Brian Christian has wed computer science and philosophy in “The Most Human Human: What Talking with Computers Teaches Us about What it Means to be Alive.” From this book I have received new insights from Artificial Intelligence, interpersonal communication, and simple conversation. This book links computers and computer science to group and individual identity which will shift the reader’s thinking certainly. Parenthetically, if you are planning to read Stephen Baker’s “Final Jeopardy: Man vs Machine and the Quest to Know Everything” you might want to read this book first. If you have completed that book, put Christian’s book on your reading list immediately. Well written, informative, and entertaining. Read expertly by the author.