Interview with Ethan Kross, author of Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It
Ethan Kross, author of Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It recommends some excellent books! Before jumping into the interview, please check out Ethan's book:
Review from Book Depository:
Today, there are more borders in the world than ever before in human history.
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Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It
In this book Ethan Kross argues that our enduring obsession with borders has brought us to a crisis point: that we are entering the endgame of a process that began thousands of years ago, when we first started dividing up the earth.
Beginning with the earliest known marker which denoted the end of one land and the beginning of the next, Kross follows the story of borders into our fragile and uncertain future - towards the virtual frontiers of the internet, and the shifting geography of a world beset by climate change. In the process, he travels to many borders old and new: from a melting border high in the glacial landscapes of the Austrian-Italian Alps to the only place on land where Europe and Africa meet; from the artist Banksy's 'Walled Off Hotel' in the conflict-torn West Bank to the Sonoran Desert and the fault lines of the US/Mexico border.
Combining history, travel and reportage, The Edge of the Plain explores how borders have grown and evolved to take control of our landscapes, our memories, our identities and our destinies. As nationalism, climate change, globalisation, technology and mass migration all collide with ever-hardening borders, something has to give. And Kross asks, is it time to let go of the lines that divide us?
Buy On:
Easons €12.31
Book Depository €10.43
Waterstones £10.99
Wordery $11.44
Q. Do you have a favourite smart thinking book (and why that book)?
Man’s Search for Meaning by Viktor Frankl – for showing how meaning can be found in even the most trying situations.
Review From Book Depository: A prominent Viennese psychiatrist before the war, Viktor Frankl was uniquely able to observe the way that he and other inmates coped with the experience of being in Auschwitz. He noticed that it was the men who comforted others and who gave away their last piece of bread who survived the longest - and who offered proof that everything can be taken away from us except the ability to choose our attitude in any given set of circumstances.
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Man's Search for Meaning
The sort of person the prisoner became was the result of an inner decision and not of camp influences alone. Only those who allowed their inner hold on their moral and spiritual selves to subside eventually fell victim to the camp's degenerating influence - while those who made a victory of those experiences turned them into an inner triumph.
Buy On:
Easons €12.09
Book Depository €7.63
Waterstones £9.99
Wordery $10.00
Q. What's the most recent smart thinking book you've read (and how would you rate it)?
My Lobotomy by Howard Dully. Fantastic memoir.
Review From Book Depository:
In this heartfelt memoir from one of the youngest recipients of the transorbital lobotamy, Howard Dully shares the story of a painfully dysfunctional childhood, a misspent youth, his struggle to claim the life that was taken from him, and his redemption.
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My Lobotomy: A Memoir
At twelve, Howard Dully was guilty of the same crimes as other boys his age: he was moody and messy, rambunctious with his brothers, contrary just to prove a point, and perpetually at odds with his parents. Yet somehow, this normal boy became one of the youngest people on whom Dr. Walter Freeman performed his barbaric transorbital--or ice pick--lobotomy.
Abandoned by his family within a year of the surgery, Howard spent his teen years in mental institutions, his twenties in jail, and his thirties in a bottle. It wasn't until he was in his forties that Howard began to pull his life together. But even as he began to live the "normal" life he had been denied, Howard struggled with one question: Why?
There were only three people who would know the truth: Freeman, the man who performed the procedure; Lou, his cold and demanding stepmother who brought Howard to the doctor's attention; and his father, Rodney. Of the three, only Rodney, the man who hadn't intervened on his son's behalf, was still living. Time was running out. Stable and happy for the first time in decades, Howard began to search for answers.Through his research, Howard met other lobotomy patients and their families, talked with one of Freeman's sons about his father's controversial life's work, and confronted Rodney about his complicity. And, in the archive where the doctor's files are stored, he finally came face to face with the truth.
Revealing what happened to a child no one--not his father, not the medical community, not the state--was willing to protect, My Lobotomy exposes a shameful chapter in the history of the treatment of mental illness. Yet, ultimately, this is a powerful and moving chronicle of the life of one man.
Buy On:
Book Depository €21.08
Waterstones £12.99
Q. Do you have a favourite childhood book?
Goodbye Columbus by Philip Roth (maybe not childhood,but adolescence)
Review From Book Depository:
Goodbye, Columbus is the story of Neil Klugman and pretty, spirited Brenda Patimkin, he of poor Newark, she of suburban Short Hills, who meet one summer and fall into an affair that is as much about social class and suspicion as it is about love. The novella is accompanied by five short stories - sometimes iconoclastic, sometimes elegiac - that crackle with irreverent originality and display Roth's blazing early talent.
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Goodbye, Columbus and Five Short Stories
Philip Roth's prize-winning first book instantly established its author's reputation as a writer of explosive wit, merciless insight and humane compassion for even the most self-deluding of his characters.
Buy On:
Book Depository €9.65
Waterstones £9.99
Wordery $9.71
Q. Do you prefer reading on paper, Kindle or listening to an audiobook?
Paper.
Q. Do you have a favourite bookshop (and why that shop)?
Literati and Nicola’s books – two cozy ann arbor local independent bookshops where you can disappear for hours and find hidden gems.
Many thanks to Ethan for recommending some excellent books! Please don't forget to check out Ethan's book Chatter: The Voice in Our Head, Why It Matters, and How to Harness It.
Daryl
Image Copyrights: Ebury Publishing (Chatter, My Lobotomy), Vintage Publishing (Man's Search For Meaning, Goodbye, Colombus).
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