Interesting and important, but not easy ( )

The author is a neuropsychologist in New York, who trained with Alexandr Luria in Moscow, but emigrated after the Jewish exception to emigration was enacted in the USSR. This is partly a memoir, and partly a book about frontal lobe function. He has very interesting things to say about the orbitofrontal syndrome as accounting for sociopathic behavior, about schizophrenia as a syndrome of frontal lobe dysfunction, and about Tourette's and OCD as frontal lobe and caudate damage. His speculations about history and human society are much less coherent. Well written; he is a friend and confidant of Oliver Sacks. ( )

As I write this I'm listening to the Harvard Class Day on the day before their commencement ceremony. It's raining heavily. The undergraduates are making each other laugh, rehashing their high school valedictorian address by changing a line here and there, reviewing their experiences during the last four years, pumping themselves up to make something of their lives after Harvard.

What is that about? Showing they have healthy frontal lobes. Frankly, writing a review of a book about the frontal lobes and their extensive connection with other areas of the brain, using my frontal lobes, may be an oxymoron. Goldberg, an NYU Med School professor, other than his personal (read: self-serving) asides about his escape from the 'evil empire' which educated him (for free) to the doctoral level, which he repaid by leaving his homeland just as many third world professionals, gives us the benefit of his enormous knowledge of neuropychology. And enormous it is.

You may not think the same way about yourself or others after reading this book. If you can get through it. The chapters in the middle, unlike the pap at the beginning and end of most nonfiction books, will test your powers of concentration. But the reward is there. Exercise your magic marker on the remarkable nuggets of abstruse knowledge to which he treats us.

That doorknob on your shoulders is wired in the most remarkable way. Moreover, because our experiences in life are unique, each brain is 'programmed' in a unique manner. Your mind isn't out there in another dimension, let alone in the heavens, but is a function of the brain. Heretical, isn't it? Doesn't that make us just another animal, just a little smarter than a cocker spaniel?

Well, we're not just a little smarter, we are orders of magnitude more capable than any other creature on Earth. And our frontal lobes make it so. At some point in our evolution we passed a point of critical mass such that we had self awareness and awareness of others. Social competition and, according to one theory, the ability of the human brain to resist overheating during heavy exercise, allowed, nay, necessitated increased frontal lobe development of a Darwinian sort.

Well, get to the point! Should I get this book or not? Firstly, there is an intrinsically limiting factor: one needs great frontal lobes in order to appreciate this book about frontal lobes. Hmmm. If yours are already in decline, forget it. Let a bright relative or friend summarize it for you. However, if you want to subsidise Goldberg's next lunch at an expensive Russian restaurant in New York, Voila!

Secondly, there are some dangers: did you ever embrace Freudian/Jungian, Behavioral or other psychologies? I'm sorry, you will trash them. Are you a humanist? Literature, History, Religion, Art, Politics - are a function of the frontal lobes (and their pathologies). Are you mentally ill? This may tell you the mechanisms of that illness. Some trendy illnesses are a function of unhealthy frontal lobes.

Thirdly, will 'fair from fair sometimes declines' apply to you as you age: Sorry, again. Read Goldberg's other great book, The Wisdom Paradox. It's all about the baby boomer's worst nightmare: cognitive decline. Keep watching this space for my upcoming review of that.

Fourthly, don't get a dog or an orangutang, did I spell that right?, oops, frontal lobe failure! It may make you feel less lonely and more superior but the lower orders are no real challenge for us. For that we need spouse, teenagers, tax collectors, magazine salespersons at the front door. Keep your body healthy - after all, the brain, despite the blood-brain barrier, is nourished by the rest of the body. That means greatly reduce the fifty percent of your body that is fat. That means exercise daily, don't eat fried foods, meats or junk snack foods. There's something called cholesterol in all those things. Bad. If it builds up in the arteries to the brain, bingo, you're an instant half-wit someday. Hemiplegia. Think your thoughts don't matter because others can't see them as they can see your 'ring around the collar' or smell your bad breath? Take up meditation so that in a year or two your brain may reprogram itself to a 'kinder, gentler' interior dialog. Still feel like going to church? Well, fine - God, herself, may have frontal lobes and really understand what we go through in life.

Lastly, don't blame Amazon that terrified amateurs review books in this manner! You asked for it; you're trying to spend your book budget online instead of in your neighborhood bookstore. Serves you right, cyber-buyer. ( )