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The hardback edition sold over 26,000 copies in the US, and was in "Publishers Weekly"'s 'Best Books Of 2007'. Contains many incredible insights into the brain, and a reminder of the amazing achievements of humankind. When you consider that reading is something humans invented only a few thousand years ago, which essentially means that our brains have been rearranged, then the intellectual evolution of humankind is endless.
Synopsis
Explores how our brains learnt to read. This work presents a discussion ranging from the history of the earliest known examples of written language, to whether reading online really is making us 'stupider', and why dyslexia can be a gift.
Book Details
Publisher:
ICON BOOKS
Publication Date:
06-Nov-2008
ISBN:
9781848310308
Observer review
Proust and the Squid
Stephanie Cross the observer Sun 04 January 2009
Compared with madeleines, molluscs lack literary resonance. But squid here provide an analogy for the physiology of reading; the works of Proust, meanwhile, function as a metaphor for the strange alchemy that takes place inside the reading brain. A cognitive neuroscientist, Maryanne Wolf is also the mother of a dyslexic son. Reading, Wolf reminds us, requires a major neural adaptation; there is nothing "natural" about it at all. Lucid, enthusiastic and justly praised, Proust and the Squid is also timely. The digital age, Wolf suggests, should provoke in us a Socratic scepticism, its mass of unexamined, unweighed words a real cause for concern. Brain Trainers, then, are already over; for synapse-snapping, books are still best.