Book Reviews

Being perceived as victim of an assault or as a drunk – does it matter to physicians when they treat you? Is it common to lie on purpose to a suspect and invent false evidence to get a confession? Can a suggestive interview create false memories in a witness without her noticing? Is a person more likely to get parole after the lunch break? “Well, maybe, but it should not!” - I believe you agree with me that hopefully this... more

Do animals have souls? What is the connection between animals and people? Is there a spiritual bond between human and beast? How do animals impact our lives? Dr. Vint Virga, a distinguished practitioner and leader in veterinary behavioral medicine has written a book that answers many of these questions. "The Soul of All Living Creatures" is a book about real life animal observations through the lenses of a veterinarian who encounters in his work with animals a variety of hurdles... more

If you are a graduate student just starting your academic career or a relatively new assistant professor, I highly recommend Nathaniel Lambert’s Publish and prosper: A strategy guide for students and researchers. This is a highly readable – I read it in a single day, and I am a slow reader – accessible, and engaging book in which Lambert offers valuable strategies for enhancing your research productivity. Of course, the title is a play on “publish or perish,” the mantra... more

The concept of this book The Reason I Jump: The inner voice of a thirteen-year-old boy with autism by Naoki Higashida is based on a fascinating idea. A 13-year-old boy with autism answers questions about his inner life that the outer world wants to know to understand autism better. Additionally, some short stories are in the book as well as a long-read at the end about going to heaven and keeping or losing one’s identity. The questions include whether he... more

Reading a self-help book is like talking to a stranger in a bar – you either identify with the person’s story immediately and feel like you can talk the whole night or you don’t, which is when you try to move to another table. Regarding Jacqui Marson’s book “The Curse of Lovely” I felt similar. After reading the first chapter I couldn’t fully identify myself with the author’s personal story so I was tempted to classify the book as “not... more

Humans have large brains. According to the social brain hypothesis, proposed by Robin Dunbar, the social environment played a large role in the evolution of the human brain’s structure and function. Today, typing “the social brain” in google scholar results in more than 10.000 hits. More than half of those hits refer to papers or books published since 2010. Conclusion: the social brain is a “hot” term in psychology. In his book “Social: Why our brains are wired to connect”... more

What Makes Olga Run is an engaging, informative and inspiring read about the international track star Olga Kotelko. At the time of the writing of the book, Olga was holding 26 world records, and had over 600 medals won at throwing, sprint, and jump events. This is quite impressive, but here is where things get really interesting: Olga is 95 years old currently, and she has taken up track-and-field at the age of 77! When award-winning Canadian writer Bruce Grierson... more

Hermann Ebbinghaus was one of the pioneers and founding fathers of experimental psychology. What makes him a far more distinct person to remember, though, is the following: In the late 19th century, Ebbinghaus sat in his dusty basement for weeks on end, studying himself by investigating how he memorized endless amounts of meaningless syllables (e.g., KAV, LUK, etc.). Just think of it - what a tedious business! He conducted this bizarre self-experiment because he wanted to understand how human memory... more

Kenrick has a very nice writing style and is quite self-deprecating in most of the anecdotes he presents. In his book Sex, Murder and the Meaning of Life, Kenrick talks about his years growing up in a tough neighborhood, his priorities in the different times of his life, and finally provides some advice based on his experience. His approach is to explain how and why humans behave in particular ways from an evolutionary psychologist’s perspective. However, this book was not... more