No citations? What is this, amateur hour?

Indeed very short, Corballis's little nuggets were full of exciting current ideas about the brain, a topic getting more and more popular (dare I say 'headway'?). Many topics have been covered elsewhere, but I appreciated his frank criticism of popular theories and offerings of his own alternatives (eg about the evolution of language). I highly recommend this book even though it's quite short (or esp because it's so short!): it offers more than it's share of information and insight.

Tanganyika laughter epidemic

Eh. It was mainly random “fun facts”, rather than a tour of the brain itself. I was hoping I’d learn something about brain anatomy.

This is exactly what the title says it is. A very short tour of the mind. It's essentially a collection of author Michael Corballis's magazine articles on subtopics related to mind and behavior.

The articles are fun, interesting and short. But be warned, they are 100% not suitable for individuals with a low tolerance for nerdy as hell puns.

I think my favorite part about Corballis's work in general is his evolutionary orientation. It's spot on. I for the life of me can't understand the resistance to evolutionary psychology. There's obviously really bad examples of evolutionary psychology (just like every other branch of science), but to reject the very idea of an evolutionary analysis of human cognition and behavior on principal (like many of its critics do) seems ultimately indefensible.

As far as I can figure, brains evolved just like everything else biological. Anyway don't get me started.

If you're a psych nerd you won't find anything here that you didn't already know, but what ever. I didn't learn much but I found value in the interesting presentation of the ideas and I more or less related to the articles as breezy little refresher snacks.

This is a fun little book, but if you're in the mood for deep, keep looking. Try some of Corballis's long form stuff like The Recursive Mind if that's what you're wanting.

Humorous read chock-a-block with interesting neuroscience facts. I liked that each bit was only 4-5 very small pages long, fit my attention span at the time. Docked one star because his discussion of linguistics was a bit, uh. Kinda makes me wonder what else he wrote that doesn't sound kosher to experts in that particular field, but eh, I enjoyed the book.

There were a few interesting facts but mostly I didn't learn anything new, and a couple of things he brings up are outdated as per the latest literature. Overall I'm unimpressed; I mainly picked up the book because of Steven Pinker's glowing review on the cover. Damnit, Pinker, you let me down.