A neurologist and amateur musician explores the connections between neurology and music and provides an informative look into how and why people make music, how human beings hear music, and how musicians remember what they're playing

Tone Deaf and All Thumbs? An Invitation to Music-Making

Arts & Photography

Wilson, Frank R.

Music

Vintage Books

"From one of our most elegantly controversial writers, here is a retrospective of essays, reviews, and profiles that reflects the range and depth of her engagement with psychoanalysis, criticism, art, and literature." "Janet Malcolm is perhaps best known for her writings on psychoanalysis, and here, in several essays, she addresses the subject with her usual erudition and lively skepticism, examining aspects of that "absurdist collaboration," the psychoanalytic dialogue, from which come "small, stray self-recognitions that no other human relationship yields, brought forward under conditions . . . that no other human relationship could survive." In a selection of book reviews, Malcolm takes up such subjects as Tom Wolfe's vendetta against modern architecture, Milan Kundera's literary experiments, Vaclav Havel's prison letters, the art of autobiography, and a Victorian literary scandal. In the title essay, she expresses her conviction that the best criticism is "an exercise in excess and provocation," a process of "disfiguring the work of art almost beyond recognition" that allows us to see it in a radically new way." "In the final section, Malcolm gives us three extended portraits. She observes from behind "The One-Way Mirror" the work of Salvador Minuchin, pioneer and leading exponent of the inherently unorthodox practice of family therapy; she follows a former Czech dissident through the somewhat deflated world of post-revolutionary Prague; and in "A Girl of the Zeitgeist," she brilliantly evokes the New York art world with her profile of a quintessential art insider, the engagingly grave Ingrid Sischy." "Each piece in this collection displays the incisive quizzicality and dazzling epigrammatic style that are the hallmarks of the writer whom Harold Bloom (speaking of Malcolm's In the Freud Archives) has called "the calmly rational Alice in this Wonderland.""--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

The Hand: How its use shapes the brain, language, and human culture

Literature & Fiction

New York: Pantheon Books

The Hand: How Its Use Shapes the Brain, Language, and Human Culture

"The human hand is so beautifully formed, its actions are so powerful, so free and yet so delicate that there is no thought of its complexity as an instrument; we use it as we draw our breath, unconsciously." With these words written in 1833, Sir Charles Bell expressed the central theme of some of the most far-reaching and exciting research being done in science today. For humans, the lifelong apprenticeship with the hand begins at birth. We are guided by our hands, and we are indelibly shaped by the knowledge that comes to us through our use of them. The Hand delineates the ways in which our hands have shaped our development--cognitive, emotional, linguistic, and psychological--in light of the most recent research being done in anthropology, neuroscience, linguistics, and psychology. How did structural changes in the hand prepare human ancestors for increased use of tools and for our own remarkable ability to design and manufacture them? Is human language rooted in speech, or are its deepest roots to be found in the gestures that made communal hunting and manufacture possible? Is early childhood experience in reaching and grasping the secret of the human brain's unique capacity to redefine intelligence with each new generation in every culture and society? Frank Wilson's inquiry incorporates the experiences and insights of jugglers, surgeons, musicians, puppeteers, and car mechanics. His fascinating book illuminates how our hands influence learning and how we, in turn, use our hands to leave our personal stamp on the world.

Health, Fitness & Dieting

Psychology & Counseling

Pantheon

"A startling argument . . . provocative . . . absorbing." --The Boston Globe "Ambitious . . . arresting . . . celebrates the importance of hands to our lives today as well as to the history of our species." --The New York Times Book Review The human hand is a miracle of biomechanics, one of the most remarkable adaptations in the history of evolution. The hands of a concert pianist can elicit glorious sound and stir emotion; those of a surgeon can perform the most delicate operations; those of a rock climber allow him to scale a vertical mountain wall. Neurologist Frank R. Wilson makes the striking claim that it is because of the unique structure of the hand and its evolution in cooperation with the brain that Homo sapiens became the most intelligent, preeminent animal on the earth. In this fascinating book, Wilson moves from a discussion of the hand's evolution--and how its intimate communication with the brain affects such areas as neurology, psychology, and linguistics--to provocative new ideas about human creativity and how best to nurture it. Like Oliver Sacks and Stephen Jay Gould, Wilson handles a daunting range of scientific knowledge with a surprising deftness and a profound curiosity about human possibility. Provocative, illuminating, and delightful to read, The Hand encourages us to think in new ways about one of our most taken-for-granted assets. "A mark of the book's excellence [is that] it makes the reader aware of the wonder in trivial, everyday acts, and reveals the complexity behind the simplest manipulation." --The Washington Post

United States

Vintage

Die Hand. Geniestreich der Evolution.

Rowohlt Tb.

Wohin Mit Den Händen? =How To Handle Hands?

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Books by Wilson, Frank R.