If you feel your synapses are in need of a little stimulation, this is the book for you!
It's hard to plot precisely the range of Michael and Ellen Kaplan's extremely comprehensive Bozo Sapiens; likewise, to do justice to its pace, wit and all-round interest, but if I say it is broad but concise, compiled with consummate skill and beautifully written with a light touch, you'll get the general idea.
Subtitled "Why to err is human", it examines how and why we make mistakes - why, when faced with a choice, we so often get it wrong, why, even when we have knowledge and past experience to help us, we fail to make the right call. The raw material used to support theories and provide explanations is a polymath's dream, and here I'm reminded of the BT advert where for Maureen Lipman's Beattie, her grandson's "ology" qualification was the highest mark of success; this book's "ologies" - from psychology to physiology, anthropology to sociology, with economic theory, philosophy and evolutionary biology thrown in, are more than enough to establish its credentials.
So, if you want to know why going shopping when you're feeling low is just as dangerous as visiting the supermarket when you're hungry, why it's as bad an idea to lend the car to the elderly grandpa as to the teenage boy, why serotonin can make the workplace unpleasant, and it's not always wise to follow the leader, you'll find it all here. From dating to dieting, Shakespearian semantics to the Swiss T-shirt test, the authors use examples both trivial and highly serious to demonstrate how, as humans, our failures are a product of our success.
I loved the humour, the effortless cross-disciplinary shifts, the presentation of complex, inter-connected information with ease and a stylish flourish. It's quite fascinating and makes highly rewarding reading - trust me, I'm not wrong!
