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Home Browse Subjects Search New Reviews About Us Feedback Select Topic ------------- Addiction & Alcoholism Anxiety & Panic Art and Photography Audio Books Childhood Disorders Children and Teens Depression Ethics Fiction General Topics Genetics and Evolution Grief, Loss, Death & Dying Medications & Psychiatry Memoirs and Biographies Mental Health Movies & DVDs Personality Disorders Philosophy Psychoanalysis Psychology Psychotherapy Relationships Religion Self-Help Sexuality Wellness and Complementary Medicine -- -- - Volume 24, Number 06 Featured Reviews Illness by Havi Carel Tue, Dec 10th 2019 Queenie by Candice Carty-Williams Tue, Dec 10th 2019 Nihilism by Nolen Gertz Tue, Dec 10th 2019 See all this month's new reviews ! -- The Brain Health Book Using the Power of Neuroscience to Improve Your Life By John Randolph Review by Roy Sugarman, Ph.D. on Tue, Dec 31st 2019. The issue of a body-brain dichotomy has its origins in people such as Descartes, who spoke of us thinking and therefore existing, and ended somewhat with the reign of the Damasio's a husband and wife team who in writing of Descartes' "error" showed that we feel, and therefore know we exist. The brain of course, as opposed to mind, is a physical entity continuous with our bodily organs and deeply committed to all of us, including, as we now know, the gut biome with its serotonergic and melatonergic pathways, along with the enteric branch of the ANS and so on. In short, the brain is dependent on Click here to read the full review! Boys & Sex Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity By Peggy Orenstein Review by Christian Perring on Tue, Dec 31st 2019. Peggy Orenstein wrote Girls & Sex: Navigating the Complicated New Landscape in 2016. Her new book, Boys & Sex: Young Men on Hookups, Love, Porn, Consent, and Navigating the New Masculinity, is similar in its approach. She interviews many young men mainly in their late teens and early twenties, some experts and pundits, and she cites a fair amount of scholarly research. She combines her results into a very readable social analysis of the sexual lives of young men in the USA. Nearly all of her work up to now has been about girls and young women, with a little about pa Click here to read the full review! Planning, Time, and Self-Governance Essays in Practical Rationality By Michael E. Bratman Review by Peter Stone on Tue, Dec 31st 2019. In the early 1980s, Michael Bratman introduced his planning theory of intention, a major contribution to the philosophy of action. This theory was the focus of Bratman's first book, Intentions, Plans, and Practical Reasons (1987). Bratman's theory has generated an enormous debate over the ensuing three decades, a debate to which Bratman himself contributed in a series of publications, including three further books—Faces of Intention: Selected Essays on Agency and Intention (1999), Structures of Agency: Essays (2007), and Shared Agency: A Planning Theory Click here to read the full review! Pilates Anatomy Second Edition By Rael Isacowitz and Karen Clippinger Review by Beth Cholette, Ph.D. on Tue, Dec 31st 2019. Pilates Anatomy, Second Edition is an updated version of the manual originally released by authors Rael Isacowtiz and Karen Clippinger back in 2011. Isacowitz is a Pilates instructor who trained under several "first generation" Pilates teachers (i.e., those who studied directly under Joseph Pilates himself) and founded Body Arts and Science International (BASI) Pilates. Co-author Karen Clippinger has a master's degree in exercise science and is a professor emerita at California State University-Long Beach. As noted in the Preface, together Isacowitz and Clippinger h Click here to read the full review! Let's Call It a Doomsday By Katie Henry Review by Christian Perring on Tue, Dec 31st 2019. Since we are destroying the earth, it is reasonable to prepare for the end of life as we know it. But when one girl acts on this, she is labelled as mentally ill. The heroine and narrator of this YA novel is Ellis Kimball. She is a high school junior living with her parents in San Francisco. She is extremely smart but she also worries a great deal, especially about the future of the world. She goes to a therapist to work on her anxiety issues, but she is not ready to accept that she is the one with the problem. She is convinced that the world is heading towards apocalypse, but she is not sure Click here to read the full review! The Arc of Love How Our Romantic Lives Change over Time By Aaron Ben-Ze ev Review by Michael Maidan on Tue, Dec 24th 2019. Professor Ben Ze'ev, emeritus professor of Philosophy at the University of Haifa in Israel, works in the interface between Philosophy and Psychology, and for the last twenty years has published several studies on emotions in general and love in particular. The Arc of Love studies love and romantic relationships from the point of view of time. Indeed, time in two dimensions. Time as an internal dimension in a relationship between two individuals, as well as the historical time in which –at least in our individualistic Western societies– our relationships are immersed.&nb Click here to read the full review! The Case against Education Why the Education System Is a Waste of Time and Money By Bryan Caplan Review by Peter Murphy on Tue, Dec 24th 2019. About 75% of Americans favor more spending on education; about 5% favor less. In this thorough, hard-hitting book, Bryan Caplan, a professor of economics at George Mason University, makes the case that if we care about the social good, we should try to grow the 5%. The reason is simple: there is now a wide variety of evidence that the American education system fails to substantially build human capital. For many readers, the claim that our education system fails in this way, and Caplan's evidence for it, will stand out the most on first read. It is a subsidiary claim though in the book' Click here to read the full review! The Smiling Man A Novel By Joseph Knox Review by Christian Perring on Tue, Dec 24th 2019. Aidan Waits is a Manchester detective, working on the night shift with his partner Peter Sutcliffe. Together they make a dour pair, investigating the sordid side of the city. There is a businessman who is pressuring a student to have sex with him. There are random trash can fires downtown. A body is discovered in odd circumstances -- the dead man's face is distorted into a smile, and all identifying information has been stripped from his clothes. Aidan has recently been thrown under suspicion in an incident related to drug use, and his boss is out to get him. In flashbacks we learn about his e Click here to read the full review! When She Returned By Lucinda Berry Review by Christian Perring on Tue, Dec 24th 2019. Some novels are gripping reads, even though you hate them all the way through. Lucinda Berry's When She Returned has won a good amount of praise, and has over 300 reviews with an average of over 4 starts at Amazon. The mystery of the plot is gradually revealed, and the reader is forced to engage with the multiple characters. I was glad to finish it, concluding that it is really a loathsome work. The story is about a woman who returns to her family after disappearing for 11 years. They assumed that she had been kidnapped. It turns out that she was with a cult. Her husband after many year Click here to read the full review! Drop the Disorder! Challenging the culture of psychiatric diagnosis By Jo Watson Review by Michelle Joy, MD on Tue, Dec 17th 2019. I write this as a psychiatrist of two minds. But, first, the Drop the Disorder!… This book is a collection of essays inspired by the event – and eventually series of events – called "A Disorder for Everyone!" (AD4E) hosted by authors Jo Watson (book editor) and Dr. Lucy Johnstone in the United Kingdom. The introduction of the book explains these events as having 2 primary goals: 1) challenging the cul...