Sociobiology Books - Page 4

Sexual Secrets: The Alchemy of Ecstasy

Nik Douglas, Penny Slinger

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Customer Reviews:
Total reviews: 13 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Poor Title, Awesome Book 5 out of 5 stars.
28 of 28 people found this review helpful.

I often laugh at all those articles in men's and women's fad magazines that promise to reveal new "sexual secrets". You know which ones I mean . . . "Become an Animal in Bed"; "9 Ways to Turn Him On"; "Keep Her Motor Humming"; "Sex Secrets Your Neighbors Won't Tell You"; "11 Erotic Uses for a Chicken Baster" . . . stuff like that. The list goes on and on, ad nauseum. Geared towards couples who have their obligatory sex two times a week for 30 minutes and need new, neat little sound-bite ideas to keep things from getting boring. All heavy on fancy shtick and paint-by-number techniques, light on any real depth or substance.

And so . . . I write this review to promise readers that, despite the poor choice of main title, this exceptional tome is not like that at all. "Secrets" here refers to holistic, ancient wisdom that celebrates the beauty and power of the sexual energy within all of us; sexual energy that permeates all of life. Thus the subtitle, "The Alchemy of Ecstacy", more accurately hits upon the truth. The word 'tantra' means 'interwoven'. The two authors have compiled a veritable bible of ancient tantric wisdom illuminating the interconnectedness of all things - an interconnectedness that has its most wonderful, powerful, and delicious expression in the sexual union between two people.

Think of this book as an encyclopedia of sacred sexuality, albeit one not in alphabetical order . . . and not sold by traveling, door-to-door salesmen, thank goodness. It is a guide to everyday living, but not from a dogmatic perspective. It is a grand expose of everything sexual. The authors provide explanations of yoga poses, stretching techniques, and breathing exercises (for instance, to summon that kundalini energy up the spine). They even have small sections devoted to food, water, clothing, massage, worship, and service to others. But it also probes (pardon the pun) the depths of the stories of Brahma the Creative, Shiva and Shakti, and Vishnu the Preserver. And of course, there are plenty of sexual positions and sensual poetry. With pictures! We like pictures!

The whole point is that, despite what organized religion would like us to think, we are sexual creatures and we should be celebrating that fact every day through our everyday activities. All of these things (eating, yoga, service, etc) ARE manifestations of our sexual energy - giving to and connecting with Life and with others. Cultivating that sexual energy (indeed, our very life-force energy and the energy that creates Universes . . . if you will allow my melodramatic flourish) is a constant, all-day thing. But not with the sole purpose of "getting some" or even "being a better lover". Instead, to connect with Source through sexual union and remember our Oneness. As the authors say in the Introduction, "It is for those who wish to use the sexual bond as a means to liberation and who desire to transcend the limits of the individual self."

This book helped start me down the path of tantra and sacred sexuality a few years ago. May I humbly recommend it to others who seek the same.

Editorial Review:

* Features more than 600 original illustrations created by artist Penny Slinger.

* 500,000 copies in print.

* The undisputed classic in its field, it has been translated into * eleven languages since it was first published fourteen years ago.

This is the #1 bestselling title on the sexual mysteries of the East. Sexual Secrets was the first book to explore the Eastern path of love and mysticism, bringing together more than a thousand years of practical techniques for enhancing sexual awareness and achieving transcendental unity.

Steps to an Ecology of Mind: Collected Essays in Anthropology, Psychiatry, Evolution, and Epistemology

Gregory Bateson

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Total reviews: 10 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

Gregory Bateson was a philosopher, anthropologist, photographer, naturalist, and poet, as well as the husband and collaborator of Margaret Mead. With a new foreword by his daughter Mary Katherine Bateson, this classic anthology of his major work will continue to delight and inform generations of readers.

"This collection amounts to a retrospective exhibition of a working life. . . . Bateson has come to this position during a career that carried him not only into anthropology, for which he was first trained, but into psychiatry, genetics, and communication theory. . . . He . . . examines the nature of the mind, seeing it not as a nebulous something, somehow lodged somewhere in the body of each man, but as a network of interactions relating the individual with his society and his species and with the universe at large."—D. W. Harding, New York Review of Books

"[Bateson's] view of the world, of science, of culture, and of man is vast and challenging. His efforts at synthesis are tantalizingly and cryptically suggestive. . . .This is a book we should all read and ponder."—Roger Keesing, American Anthropologist

Gregory Bateson (1904-1980) was the author of Naven and Mind and Nature.

The open society and its enemies

Karl Raimund Popper

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Total reviews: 37 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Philosophy of History: Prove untruth, not truth 5 out of 5 stars.
5 of 6 people found this review helpful.

To Popper, science is a process of "conjectures and refutations"-- advancing bold conjectures about the state of the world and then trying to refute them. "Even in the study of history, objectivity should be sought in the institutions and traditions of a discipline. It is only through the give and take of open criticism and the ongoing interplay of many different kinds of biases that anything approaching objectivity will emerge." Thus, "truth" is seen as a hypothesis--you can't prove truth, you can only prove untruth. This is because one cannot know everything, therefore, nothing can be proved to be true.
Open societies, in Popper's definition, with their ideals of freedom and reason, of men who may create their own future, are opposed to the regimes of authoritarianism and totalitarianism. Hegel and Marx are the main focus of the book. Aristotle built his theory on Plato; Hegel on Aristotle; Marx on Hegel. Popper is concerned with their philosophies of history. A philosophy of history is an attempt to interpret systematically the historical process by a principle that unifies the results of research and points to an "ultimate meaning" behind the process. It involves systematic reflection on scientifically derived data about the past. All the parts are unified to form a whole with "ultimate meaning."
It was thus not Marx's historicist method which led him to success, but instead the "methods of institutional analysis." In many democratic, capitalist countries production has been so great that the workers have a higher standard of living than Marx ever envisaged. He also had an unrealistic view of human nature--that because man is born good, changing his environment will bring happiness. But this view ignores the universality of human imperfection, and the sacredness of personality that is lost in the communist state.

Yet, Popper claims that Marx has done Christianity a great service by pointing out the humanitarian demands of Christ. Popper made many generalizations about Christianity without describing the basic tenets that have made Christianity "the strongest opponent of Communism." Popper does not view Christianity as being a "substitute from dreams and wish--fulfillment; it should resemble neither the holding of a ticket in a lottery, nor the holding of a policy in an insurance company." Popper opposes a "leap in the dark" of faith, whether by Marxists probing the beginning of evolution, or by those experiencing a personal relationship with God. Faith is necessary, but it is to be based on a rational understanding of the difference between belief and fact, and the appropriate place for both.

Editorial Review:

Written in political exile in New Zealand during the Second World War and first published in two volumes in 1945, Karl Popper's The Open Society and Its Enemies is one of the most famous books of the twentieth century. Hailed by Bertrand Russell as a 'vigorous and profound defence of democracy', its now legendary attack on the philosophies of Plato, Hegel and Marx prophesied the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and exposed the fatal flaws of socially engineered political systems. Popper's highly accessible style, his erudite and lucid explanations of the political thought of great philosophers and the recent resurgence of totalitarian regimes around the world are just three the reasons for the book's enduring popularity and why it demands to be read today.

Our Babies, Ourselves

Meredith Small

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Total reviews: 66 Average rating: 4.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

"In the winter of 1995, in a dimly lit room in Atlanta, Georgia, I witnessed a birth. Not the birth of a baby, but of a new science, ethnopediatrics." Thus begins Meredith Small's new, groundbreaking book on the study of parents and infants across cultures and the way different caretaking styes affect the health, well-being, and survival of infants. Pediatricians, child development researchers, and anthropologists today have turned their research efforts to studying this new science of why we parent our children the way we do.

Each culture, and often each family, offers advice and directives on the right and wrong way to raise and care for infants, from feeding, interaction, emotional support, sleeping, and more. Yet scientists are finding that what we are taught is the right way to parent our children is based on nothing more than cultural directives-and may even run directly counter to a baby's biological needs. Should a child be encouraged to sleep alone from an early age, as parents do here in the U.S.? Is breastfeeding better than bottlefeeding, or is that just the myth of the '90s? How frequently should children be nursed-or does it matter? Do children in all cultures develop colic? How do mothers in different cultures respond to a crying baby? And how important to our infants' ultimate development is it to talk, sing, and interact with them? These are but a few of the questions Meredith Small, through the research emerging from this new science, answers-and the answers are not only surprising, but may even change the way that we think and go about raising our children.

Written for general audiences and parents alike, Our Babies, Ourselves shows what makes us bring up our kids the way we do-and what is actually best for babies.

The Interpretation of Cultures: Selected Essays

Clifford Geertz

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Total reviews: 5 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Just a Continuation of Anti-Progressive, Anti-Science 2 out of 5 stars.
47 of 159 people found this review helpful.

In the typical post-modernist sense, Geertz seeks to cast doubt on everything without leaving us with anything in place. Just like other post modernists, his theories are so vague, poorly stated, and in generally strange that they cannot be proved right or wrong. Even if he, like other post-modernists, is right, we do not gain anything but perhaps a somewhat edited understanding of our world.

The field of cultural anthropology in and of itself is a "shady" field. The lack of biological evidence to back up Geertz's claims is immense. To think the Central Nervous System is a result of culture is simply asinine. To think that somehow culture exists out there for us to grab and chose and that it is somehow transferred through our genes and eventually influences evolution is outright ridiculous.

Just because you can make claims and cast doubt on opposing claims does not mean you are correct. There is little evidence to show that the human race is still undergoing evolution in the Darwinian sense. Geertz's failure, or rather deliberate attempt to, distinguish between the mind and the brain shows his general distaste for any sort of reasonable logic.

Please: Someone rescue anthropology from its current blinding veil of post modernist, post-structuralist ideology. Post modernism is like chewing gum that sticks to your shoe sole and impedes you from moving forward. OK, so it has our attention, now let us get it off our feet, move on into the future, and leave this decrepit, inane theory behind us all.

Editorial Review:

In The Interpretation of Cultures, the most original anthropologist of his generation moved far beyond the traditional confines of his discipline to develop an important new concept of culture. This groundbreaking book, winner of the 1974 Sorokin Award of the American Sociological Association, helped define for an entire generation of anthropologists what their field is ultimately about.

Lives of a Cell: Notes of a Biology Watcher

Lewis Thomas

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Total reviews: 44 Average rating: 4.0 of 5

Forever Young 5 out of 5 stars.
1 of 1 people found this review helpful.

Lewis Thomas is that odd trifecta: a learned scientist; a speculative philosopher; and a master of prose both gracious and graceful.

The Lives of a Cell is a book of 29 essays originally written for the New England Journal of Medicine. They are short; they are light and airy; they are pretty; they are fun. Teenagers could enjoy them. But these essays are fundamentally serious and scientific. Lewis is always on the hunt for the cosmic insight or deeper truth.

His mind works metaphorically. He seeks interconnections. A recurring motif is to wonder whether social animals such as ants are like cells or more like human societies or perchance like the planet earth. Here is a celebrated quote:

"I have been trying to think of the earth as a kind of organism, but it is no go. I cannot think of it this way. It is too big, too complex, with too many working parts lacking visible connections. The other night, driving through a hilly, wooded part of southern New England, I wondered about this. If not like an organism, what is it like, what is it most like? Then, satisfactorily for that moment, it came to me: it is most like a single cell."

This book was a bestseller around 1975 and won the National Book Award. Everyone seemed to be reading it. I read it. I recently ordered it again because I thought it might contain a tidbit for a video I was making called How To Teach Science. No such luck, but this is a book anyone could enjoy reading twice. Most of it remains in the present. It is finally the most readable of science books. Here are two more samples:

"My cells are no longer the pure line entities I was raised with; they are ecosystems more complex than Jamaica Bay. I like to think that they work in my interest, that each breath they draw for me, but perhaps it is they who walk through the local park in the early morning, sensing my senses, listening to my music, thinking my thoughts."

"Viewed from a suitable height, the aggregating clusters of medical scientists in the bright sunlight of the boardwalk at Atlantic city, swarmed there from everywhere for the annual meetings, have the look of assemblages of social insects. There is the same vibrating, ionic movement, interrupted by the darting back and forth of jerky individuals to touch antennae and exchange small bits of information..."

For anyone thinking of writing non-fiction, this is an ultimate text book. Apparently Thomas learned his style from Montaigne. Good luck on that.

For anyone thinking of a career in science, Thomas shows the advantages of being partly a generalist, of being in your field and outside your field--the better to see some strange shadow or artifact that nobody else has noticed.

Epilogue: I ordered a used copy from an Amazon dealer in the northwest USA. Stuck in the book was an old ticket to a music concert (George Winston, solo piano; Wikipedia says he has been called The Father of New Age Music). Date of ticket: 1985. City: Norfolk, Va., where I am now. That's the sort of goofy loop that Thomas could build an essay on. What's more New Age than Amazon?

Obedience to Authority: An Experimental View

Stanley Milgram

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Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Obedience to Authority 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

The results of the experiments in this book are astounding and make you think about what your own reaction would be.

Fascinating.....a must read! 5 out of 5 stars.
0 of 0 people found this review helpful.

Just finished reading Obedience to Authority for a graduate seminar, and must say that it is one of the more relevant and insightful books I've read during my training. In this highly ambitious book, Milgram, motivated in large part by the large-scale and gruesome acts against humanity that occurred during WWII, sets himself to the task of identifying the conditions under which "people would defy authority in the face of a clear moral imperative". To his (and this reviewer's) surprise, he finds that when ordinary individuals are commanded by figures of authority to carry out morally reprehensible acts, they lack the intrapersonal resources required to disobey. While his method of inquiry may be shocking by today's standards, I find his experimental designs, variable manipulations, and theoretical contributions as elegant in their simplicity and highly illuminating.

To that end, I strongly recommend this book to scholars and engaged citizens. Not only is it a fascinating read, but it reminds the reader of the importance of moral autonomy in today's world, as well.

Editorial Review:

A modern classic with a new foreword by Stanley Milgram's former teacher and friend, author Jerome S. Bruner, Obedience to Authority emerges, even on the thirtieth anniversary of its publication, as a timely book for this age of war and terrorism.

Half a century ago, social scientist Stanley Milgram carried out a series of experiments. The "teacher" is told to administer electroshocks in progressively more painful degrees to the "learner." The teacher -- unaware that the learner is an actor receiving no shocks at all -- is the real focus of the study. These controversial and criticized experiments illustrate how people will obey authority regardless of consequences.

Social Problems

Joseph Julian

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Total reviews: 22 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

Editorial Review:

Budding with new insight, this top-selling, proactive book probes the nature and causes of each major social problem confronting citizens today, and, with historical and multicultural sensitivity, delves into the social control and social action issues inherent to each particular problem. Balancing viewpoints and supporting material with research and policy, each chapter covers topics in a micro to macro format, pointing out the interrelationships among today's social problems and the possibility of approaching them from several perspectives. Chapter topics include sociological perspectives on social problems; problems of physical health; mental illness; sex-related social problems; alcohol and other drugs; crime and criminals; violence; poverty amid affluence; racism, prejudice, and discrimination; sex roles and inequality; an aging society; the changing family; problems of education; problems of work and the economy; urban problems; population and immigration; technology and the environment; and war and terrorism. For individuals looking to understand today's social problems—and help solve them.

Down These Mean Streets

Piri Thomas

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Total reviews: 53 Average rating: 5.0 of 5

Editorial Review:

"A linguistic event. Gutter language, Spanish imagery and personal poetics . . . mingle into a kind of individual statement that has very much its own sound."
--The New York Times Book Review

Thirty years ago Piri Thomas made literary history with this lacerating, lyrical memoir of his coming of age on the streets of Spanish Harlem. Here was the testament of a born outsider: a Puerto Rican in English-speaking America; a dark-skinned morenito in a family that refused to acknowledge its African blood. Here was an unsparing document of Thomas's plunge into the deadly consolations of drugs, street fighting, and armed robbery--a descent that ended when the twenty-two-year-old Piri was sent to prison for shooting a cop.

As he recounts the journey that took him from adolescence in El Barrio to a lock-up in Sing Sing to the freedom that comes of self-acceptance, faith, and inner confidence, Piri Thomas gives us a book that is as exultant as it is harrowing and whose every page bears the irrepressible rhythm of its author's voice. Thirty years after its first appearance, this classic of manhood, marginalization, survival, and transcendence is available in an anniversary edition with a new Introduction by the author.

Soul on Ice

Eldridge Cleaver

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Total reviews: 42 Average rating: 3.5 of 5

decent writer, bad man... 1 out of 5 stars.
10 of 23 people found this review helpful.

people consider this to be 'in the world of literature' and serious?
cleaver's a misogynistic pig, a racist, and a multiple rapist. that's all you need to know.

He right, even now. 5 out of 5 stars.
2 of 7 people found this review helpful.

The themes exhibited in "Soul On Ice" are race, racism, individuality vs. societal standards and traditions, injustice, humanity, religion/faith, inhumanity and activism. Cleaver spends a great deal of time writing on the injustices Black people face in America, and how even though he is what society wants him to be, it is his fault that he allow society to be right. He pledges to take steps towards change and to become a benefit to society.
I know that a lot of people think that they know about the civil rights movement and the effects it had on the Black race, but they don't. This story of a man who, at the time, had been locked up for more than half of his life, is the story of all real Black people. I think that sometimes Black people do things and think that it is their nature, which is how stereotypes brew. Cleaver shows us that it is history and hatred that have made us a collective in an usual individual world. We do think for ourselves, yet a racist society continues to force us to travel down a road that we have not set for ourselves, and that he has fell into racist America's trap. He has become the stereotype: (supposedly) uneducated, a prisoner, and a victim of "The Ogre" (the white woman).