|
| Everyday Survival: Why Smart People Do Stupid Things |
|
 Larger image
|
List Price: $25.95
Our Price: $15.83
You Save: $ 10.12 (39%)
Availability: Usually ships in 24 hours
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
|
Average Customer Rating:   
|
|
Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 155.9
EAN: 9780393058383
ISBN: 0393058387
Label: W. W. Norton
Manufacturer: W. W. Norton
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 320
Publication Date: 2008-09-15
Publisher: W. W. Norton
Studio: W. W. Norton
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Editorial Reviews:
|
The author of the life-changing bestseller Deep Survival once again brings us revelations about ourselves from the cutting edge of science.
Laurence Gonzales shows how modern society has made us lazy and susceptible to previously unknown threats. "Curiosity, awareness, attention," he writes. "Those are the tools of our everyday survival...we all must be scientists at heart or be victims of forces that we don't understand."
Gonzales turns his talent for gripping narrative, knowledge of the way our minds and bodies work, and bottomless curiosity about the world to the topic of how we can best use the lessons of our evolutionary history to overcome the hazards of everyday life. He finds that natural laws profoundly affect our actions, and he reveals the hidden causes and costs of our behavior, whether as individuals or as a species whose decisions may be leading to darker times. Whether you are climbing a mountain or the corporate ladder, Everyday Survival will change the way you view your choices in our complex, dangerous, and quickly changing world.
|
|
|
| Spotlight customer reviews: |
|
Customer Rating:
Summary: Sometimes Rambling, Sometimes Eloquent
Comment: This book was a struggle to read. It started off well with examples of how and why people can make fatal or critical mistakes in certain situations, such as Flight 587 which crashed in New York, but then the book went on a long, speculative diatribe about one particular archeological ancestor, the Laoteli woman, and how she and her presumed child may have dealt with a presumed catastrophe. Gonzales goes back to this character, completely based soley on a set of footprints, as a kind of model for the way we have evolved in a stuttering fashion in reacting to changes in the environment. So today, if you can follow Gonzales' logic, we are in a position where we can proactively choose to respond to the problems we have created throughout the history of man, particularly to the problem of global warming, if we can just escape from our fixed, heuristic way of dealing with life. It's all presented in a pseudo-philosopical, melodramatic style, which results in loose connections among the different points Gonzales is trying to make.
His melodrama is extended to a visit to the Sierra Madre in Mexico, where Gonzalez and a friend visit Gonzales' Tarahumara indigenous ancestors, who in many ways lead lives that may have been similar to those of our ancient ancestors, like Gonzales' Laoteli woman. Here again, Gonzales goes overboard, romanticizing a Tarahumara indian named Don Juan, who has an amazing ability to shoot arrows a long distance from a crude bow, and find exactly where he shot them (wow!). There is also an odd incident where Gonzales and his friend discover some previously unknown ancient city and there is no indication that they mentioned this to any professional archeologists. I guess it's their little secret.
The specific reality-based examples that he provides are fascinating, like the Flight 587 one mentioned earlier, as well as the NASA Challenger and Columbia disasters. But these flashes of fascination do not compensate for the meandering, unfocused narrative.
Customer Rating:
Summary: "Well, I guess I better write another book"
Comment: The first half of the book gives some solid vignettes about internal scripts and behavioral models that explain why our brains sometimes run on autopilot and get us into trouble. But the final half of the book really has nothing to do with the title. It's a meandering, free-association ramble about whatever the heck happened to be in the author's head the minute his fingers were striking the keys. Once I got to Page 254 where he tries to compare the curve of entropy of the universe since the big bang to the curve of a human emotional response in a crisis, I cut my losses and threw it on the "to sell" pile.
After the success of "Deep Survival", it's almost like this book is just a mechanical attempt to get his next paycheck while his name still has cachet.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Everyday Survival
Comment: After hanging on every word while reading Deep Survival, I was very disappointed with Everyday Survival. The first 3-4 chapters showed promise with the same excellent story-telling blended with psychology research, evolutionary psychology, and well developed arguments. After that, however, the book devolves and gets lost in ramblings on entropy, environmentalism, and other topics that have little to do with "everyday survival". Instead, just when you think you know where Gonzales is heading, he drifts in another direction. No cohesive theme brings the book together and just getting through the last five chapters became a challenge.
Customer Rating:
Summary: The first six chapters are on why people do stupid things. There are 16 chapters.
Comment: Pros: First six chapters are interesting and about the main reasons why folks do silly things with good examples provided.
Cons: Last 10 chapters are an odd mix of material on saving the Earth, physics, entropy, natural history, "look who I met when I went here" and biography of Gonzales and his father. Sources not cited, only selected bibliography provided. Poorly edited: Caption of picture on page 22 of the hardcover is incorrect, "dollars" is spelled "dolars" on page 210.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Starts strong, then unravels
Comment: Like other reviewers, I have a dog eared, underlined, heavily used copy of Deep Survival. So when I saw that Gonzales had a new book out, I couldn't wait to read it. What disappoints me about this book is not that it is not as good as Deep Survival, but that it starts with some interesting ideas and ends up getting side tracked and derailed.
The first six chapters are excellent. His link between how we make decisions and our impact on the environment are elegant and provocative. He talks about how we walk about in a "vacation state of mind," oblivious to the effects of our actions. I feel like I see this every day in the way people interact with each other. He then applies this "insulation from reality" to a macro view of the earth's systems and how humanity interacts with them.
After chapter six, the book unravels, jumping rapidly from issue to issue, supporting his statements with increasingly dubious science and venturing into New Age territory. One of the major themes of the later chapters is entropy, which is appropriate as there is a general decline into disorder in the later chapters.
I didn't pick up this book expecting a treatise on environmental responsibility and was not disappointed when Gonzales started down that path. I can, however, see how a "rugged individualist" would be shocked to find ideas about ecological stewardship in a book that looks like it is going to be about wilderness adventures. For those people, you've been warned; maybe you should look for a different book. For everyone else, find this book at your library, read the first six chapters and then return it.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
