Whenever I run across something which asserts that we do/think/believe the way we do because of this chemical or that sort of brain wiring, I always find myself looking for an agenda. Or, to quote Robert Anton Wilson: "What the thinker thinks, the prover proves." While Marcus' knowledge of the workings of the human brain is impressive, and his work is informative, I'd have been happier with "Kluge" if there'd been fewer assertions that we only indulge in various belief systems because of our odd wiring.

Not that necessarily disbelieve what Marcus has written here, mind you, but I can't help but feel that we simply don't know enough about the human brain even now, to know why we do what we do. That Marcus feels he has enough proof to make some of his cases seems to me to be more a function of Wilson's assertion than any hard scientific evidence.

Still, it's a fascinating book, so don't let my problems with it get in the way of reading it. You may find that it fits your world view a bit more cozily than it did mine. ( )

Read this in April 09. I had read an earlier book by him and enjoyed it. This is another treatment of the many biases and inefficiencies that affect us (ala Kahneman Twersky). It rehashed things I knew about, but put it in the framework of evolutionary biology.

This book explores the opinion that our minds are not up to the task of modern life, because evolution has generated a hodgepodge of inefficient systems, far better equipped for other species, let alone our own prehistory. It covers problems with our memory, beliefs, choices, language and pleasure system, while the last two chapters deal with mental illness, and advice for how we can partially overcome that bad cards that evolution has dealt us. I think this is definitely one of those science books that would have worked better as a pamphlet. The first three chapters overlap immensely (the distinction between belief, choice and memory seems rather arbitrary to me). In addition, many points are obvious, or discussed in rather simplistic terms. I was really hoping for a careful discussion on the different brain systems that make up our flawed mental life, and when/why they evolved in the way they did. There could have been a wealth of fascinating brain topics (on, for instance, the fact that humans effectively have three competing brains relating to our heritage as reptiles, primitive mammals and now primates - or why our visual cortex is at the furthest away from our eyes, and most of our brains are wired for the wrong side). There also could have been a far more interesting discussion of evolution and how, until recently, those issues Marcus flags as flaws were extremely useful. Instead, the brain is hardly mentioned, and evolution is only discussed in a cursory way, mainly to counter the US creationists, I felt. There were also some absolutely awful mistakes, that any psychology undergrad could have spotted, such as his mixed up description of the Prisoner's Dilemma, or his comment that Phineas Gage had damage to the limbic system. These, to me, were pretty unforgivable and made me more suspicious of the accuracy of the rest of the content. On the positive side, it was refreshing to hear all the myriad details of our bad thinking, even if the gist of this wasn't new. Likewise the advice chapter at the end made many sensible points that probably will be useful to some. ( )

WELL HERE IS THE REVIEW THAT Amazon deleted at the author or publisher's request. Since they don't want it, I feel I'm free to post it on LT.

Unlike the other reviewers here, I loathed this book. I found it painful to read and could only get through it by dividing the material into small hunks which I processed at intervals, thus elongating the overall experience, but shorting the duration of my agony at any one time.

The problem for me was the book's frequent sophomoric discourse. Which is to say that after Dawkins and Pinker, "Kluge" hardly shines as a bastion of well developed argument. One of the things that I thought was particularly troublesome was the author's habit of allowing himself to be the sole arbiter of the definition of what is ideal or deficient. By getting to define what God-or-Evolution "should have done" Marcus creates an easy strawman which he never hesitates to knock down.

Another thing I wasn't particularly keen on was what was left out. As someone in NYU's Infant Language Learning Center I thought it was remarkable that the author avoided making any distinction between 'klugey' minds and ill-trained or ill-educated ones. Can we blame a mind for being unorganized or for making poor economic decisions, if it was never taught better?

And if you combine those two complaints to an analysis of Memory, you can perhaps get my point about the weakness of this book. Marcus posits that people are haphazard in design because he says we would be better off with perfect memories. Since we all know that we don't generally reach that standard we have a natural tendency to agree with him. This argument however never addresses the question of whether Marcus' definition is valid, nor whether it is widely held by other scientists. And the author never attempts to educates us otherwise. As it turns out there might be very good reasons for why we humans have imperfect memories. And anyone looking for evidence can turn to following article in "NewScientist" magazine: "Forgetfulness is key to a healthy mind" [16 February 2008. Magazine issue 2643].

Summary ::: All in all "Kluge" was just not the book for me. While I don't consider myself on the cutting edge of any area of science, this mom couldn't help but think that she'd seen most of the material facts and many of the concepts presented elsewhere. And in general, I thought the arguments particular to this book weren't very convincing as there was not any discussion of opposing views or evidence.

Pam T~ ( )

This is knock-off Steven Pinker. I got two-thirds into it and quit. The writing is not as smart as it should be for the topic. ( )