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The Language Instinct
- How the Mind Creates Language
- Narrated by: Arthur Morey
- Length: 18 hrs and 55 mins
- Categories: Politics & Social Sciences, Social Sciences
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great, but slow at times
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The Stuff of Thought
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In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind, explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits, denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts.
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Fascinating study of human cognition
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In The Sense of Style, the best-selling linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker answers these questions and more. Rethinking the usage guide for the 21st century, Pinker doesn’t carp about the decline of language or recycle pet peeves from the rulebooks of a century ago. Instead, he applies insights from the sciences of language and mind to the challenge of crafting clear, coherent, and stylish prose.
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Grammar for days
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Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.
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Unexpectedly good!
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america is headed for civil war
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How the Mind Works
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Overall
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In this delightful, acclaimed bestseller, one of the world’s leading cognitive scientists tackles the workings of the human mind. What makes us rational—and why are we so often irrational? How do we see in three dimensions? What makes us happy, afraid, angry, disgusted, or sexually aroused? Why do we fall in love? And how do we grapple with the imponderables of morality, religion, and consciousness?
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great, but slow at times
- By ben kuzmich on 2018-07-07
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The Stuff of Thought
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- Written by: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Dean Olsher
- Length: 9 hrs and 36 mins
- Abridged
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Overall
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In The Stuff of Thought, Steven Pinker marries two of the subjects he knows best: language and human nature. The result is a fascinating look at how our words explain our nature. What does swearing reveal about our emotions? Why does innuendo disclose something about relationships? Pinker reveals how our use of prepositions and tenses taps into peculiarly human concepts of space and time, and how our nouns and verbs speak to our notions of matter.
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It’s not in Steven Pinkers written words
- By lori Nixon on 2019-05-05
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The Blank Slate
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- Written by: Steven Pinker
- Narrated by: Victor Bevine
- Length: 22 hrs and 40 mins
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Overall
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In The Blank Slate, Steven Pinker, one of the world's leading experts on language and the mind, explores the idea of human nature and its moral, emotional, and political colorings. With characteristic wit, lucidity, and insight, Pinker argues that the dogma that the mind has no innate traits, denies our common humanity and our individual preferences, replaces objective analyses of social problems with feel-good slogans, and distorts our understanding of politics, violence, parenting, and the arts.
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Fascinating study of human cognition
- By Anonymous User on 2018-10-27
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- Length: 12 hrs and 26 mins
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Overall
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In The Sense of Style, the best-selling linguist and cognitive scientist Steven Pinker answers these questions and more. Rethinking the usage guide for the 21st century, Pinker doesn’t carp about the decline of language or recycle pet peeves from the rulebooks of a century ago. Instead, he applies insights from the sciences of language and mind to the challenge of crafting clear, coherent, and stylish prose.
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Grammar for days
- By Julie on 2018-08-21
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The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat: and Other Clinical Tales
- Written by: Oliver Sacks
- Narrated by: Jonathan Davis, Oliver Sacks - introduction
- Length: 9 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Oliver Sacks' The Man Who Mistook His Wife for a Hat tells the stories of individuals afflicted with fantastic perceptual and intellectual aberrations: patients who have lost their memories and with them the greater part of their pasts; who are no longer able to recognize people and common objects; who are stricken with violent tics and grimaces or who shout involuntary obscenities; whose limbs have become alien; who have been dismissed as retarded yet are gifted with uncanny artistic or mathematical talents.
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Unexpectedly good!
- By A. Gray on 2018-04-04
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The Quest for Cosmic Justice
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- Length: 5 hrs and 51 mins
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This book is about the great moral issues underlying many of the headline-making political controversies of our times. It is not a comforting book but a book about disturbing and dangerous trends. The Quest for Cosmic Justice shows how confused conceptions of justice end up promoting injustice, how confused conceptions of equality end up promoting inequality, and how the tyranny of social visions prevents many people from confronting the actual consequences of their own beliefs and policies.
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america is headed for civil war
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The Story of Human Language
- Written by: John McWhorter, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: John McWhorter
- Length: 18 hrs and 15 mins
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Language defines us as a species, placing humans head and shoulders above even the most proficient animal communicators. But it also beguiles us with its endless mysteries, allowing us to ponder why different languages emerged, why there isn't simply a single language, how languages change over time and whether that's good or bad, and how languages die out and become extinct.
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Fascinating!
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- Written by: John McWhorter, The Great Courses
- Narrated by: John McWhorter
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Professor John McWhorter of Columbia University takes you back through time and around the world, following the linguistic trails left by generations of humans that lead back to the beginnings of language. Utilizing historical theories and cutting-edge research, these 34 astonishing lectures will introduce you to the major language families of the world and their many offspring, including a variety of languages that are no longer spoken but provide vital links between past and present.
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Interesting lecture series
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The Better Angels of Our Nature
- Why Violence Has Declined
- Written by: Steven Pinker
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Faced with the ceaseless stream of news about war, crime, and terrorism, one could easily think we live in the most violent age ever seen. Yet as New York Times bestselling author Steven Pinker shows in this startling and engaging new work, just the opposite is true: violence has been diminishing for millennia and we may be living in the most peaceful time in our species's existence.
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Better read than listened to
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Enlightenment Now
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- Written by: Steven Pinker
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Is the world really falling apart? Is the ideal of progress obsolete? In this elegant assessment of the human condition in the third millennium, cognitive scientist and public intellectual Steven Pinker urges us to step back from the gory headlines and prophecies of doom, which play to our psychological biases. Instead, follow the data: Pinker shows that life, health, prosperity, safety, peace, knowledge, and happiness are on the rise, not just in the West but worldwide.
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Intellectual optimistic Steven Pinker did it again
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- Rethinking Time, Space, Consciousness, and the Illusion of Death
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In Beyond Biocentrism, acclaimed biologist Robert Lanza and astronomer Bob Berman take the listener on an intellectual thrill ride as they reexamine everything we thought we knew about life, death, the universe, and the nature of reality itself. The first step is acknowledging that our existing model of reality is looking increasingly creaky in the face of recent scientific discoveries.
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A fascinating invitation to keep an open mind
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The Righteous Mind
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In The Righteous Mind, social psychologist Jonathan Haidt explores the origins of our divisions and points the way forward to mutual understanding. His starting point is moral intuition - the nearly instantaneous perceptions we all have about other people and the things they do. These intuitions feel like self-evident truths, making us righteously certain that those who see things differently are wrong. Haidt shows us how these intuitions differ across cultures, including the cultures of the political left and right.
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Interesting listen, repetitive
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- The Evolution of Minds
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What is human consciousness, and how is it possible? This question fascinates thinking people from poets and painters to physicists, psychologists, and philosophers. From Bacteria to Bach and Back is Daniel C. Dennett's brilliant answer, extending perspectives from his earlier work in surprising directions, exploring the deep interactions of evolution, brains, and human culture.
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Very good presentation of this concept
- By Amazon Customer on 2019-03-24
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This explosive new audiobook challenges many of the long-held assumptions about blacks, about Jews, about Germans and Nazis, about slavery, and about education. Plainly written, powerfully reasoned, and backed with a startling array of documented facts, Black Rednecks and White Liberals takes on the trendy intellectuals of our times as well as historic interpreters of American life.
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I Was Enthrolled
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The Selfish Gene
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Richard Dawkins' brilliant reformulation of the theory of natural selection has the rare distinction of having provoked as much excitement and interest outside the scientific community as within it. His theories have helped change the whole nature of the study of social biology, and have forced thousands to rethink their beliefs about life.
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Life changing book
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Superintelligence
- Paths, Dangers, Strategies
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Superintelligence asks the questions: What happens when machines surpass humans in general intelligence? Will artificial agents save or destroy us? Nick Bostrom lays the foundation for understanding the future of humanity and intelligent life. The human brain has some capabilities that the brains of other animals lack. It is to these distinctive capabilities that our species owes its dominant position. If machine brains surpassed human brains in general intelligence, then this new superintelligence could become extremely powerful - possibly beyond our control.
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Unnecessary Jargon
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The Fabric of the Cosmos
- Space, Time, and the Texture of Reality
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Space and time form the very fabric of the cosmos. Yet they remain among the most mysterious of concepts. Is space an entity? Why does time have a direction? Could the universe exist without space and time? Can we travel to the past?
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Fantastic in any quantum reality!
- By Amazon Customer on 2018-06-06
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Thinking, Fast and Slow
- Written by: Daniel Kahneman
- Narrated by: Patrick Egan
- Length: 20 hrs and 2 mins
- Unabridged
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The guru to the gurus at last shares his knowledge with the rest of us. Nobel laureate Daniel Kahneman's seminal studies in behavioral psychology, behavioral economics, and happiness studies have influenced numerous other authors, including Steven Pinker and Malcolm Gladwell. In Thinking, Fast and Slow, Kahneman at last offers his own, first book for the general public. It is a lucid and enlightening summary of his life's work. It will change the way you think about thinking. Two systems drive the way we think and make choices, Kahneman explains....
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Very difficult to follow in audio format
- By Amazon Customer on 2017-10-06
Publisher's Summary
In this classic, the world’s expert on language and mind lucidly explains everything you always wanted to know about language: how it works, how children learn it, how it changes, how the brain computes it, and how it evolved. With deft use of examples of humor and wordplay, Steven Pinker weaves our vast knowledge of language into a compelling story: language is a human instinct, wired into our brains by evolution.
The Language Instinct received the William James Book Prize from the American Psychological Association and the Public Interest Award from the Linguistics Society of America. This edition includes an update on advances in the science of language since The Language Instinct was first published.
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- Anonymous User
- 2019-06-26
Fantastic! ...but not as an audiobook.
If you're serious about reading this book, and you're certain you want to listen to it instead of read it, I highly recommend a pen, notebook, descriptive page on Markov Chains, and an iron will. I might be dumb, but this book is just plain hard to keep up with, especially when many complex ideas are vomitted at you one after another without you ever having a chance at visualizing and/or digesting them. God forbid you try to multitask with this book, or set it as your morning alarm. The chapter on the biology of speech nearly killed me.
2 people found this helpful
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- Paul David Evans
- 2021-01-13
enjoyed very much
some of the examples went on a bit but still very interesting. I certainly hope a language instinct is proven genetically.
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- J. C.
- 2012-10-28
Absolutely Amazing and Interesting
I loved this book! The narration is great. It's all about language and linguistics. You will find out why it's easier to learn a language as a child. How the chimps never really caught on to language like we thought they would. Why it's not really true that you think differently when speaking a different language. All language started as a proto world language and two languages in Africa directly descended from that. Go ahead, you can end a sentence with a preposition. That rule is just made-up! Learn why. This book kept me enthralled form start to finish. Includes some interesting cases of medical language defects and what they tell us. Easy to listen to and understand, and it's fun!!!
20 people found this helpful
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- Barry
- 2013-05-03
'of' is meaningless!?
This book came out in 1994 and it says a lot about how fast this field is growing that certain parts already feel a little outdated. Fortunately, there is a 2007 update at the end of the book that comments on and catches up with some of the latest developments. That was one of the best parts for me, and I didn't have a clue it would be included.
Pinker is at his best relating about the exciting research going on in neurolinguistics. He is less entertaining when he tries to argue his support for a particular ideological position. I don't have an issue with the idea that a 'language instinct' may exist, but I was never quite clear what he meant by the term 'instinct.' Regardless, as an introduction to all the key topics of interest in his field, this is a great book.
That is probably a key point. Some books are very narrowly focused and organized to support a key thesis. This is more of a survey-of-the-landscape type book. I suspect Pinker got attached to his title and decided everything had to tie back to that in some way. So the book will meander around from one fascinating topic to the next and suddenly he's harping on instincts again and telling why he believes it's true and why we should care.
Apart from that minor complaint, I found this book thoroughly enjoyable. I find modern discussions of linguistics to shed so much light on 'true' grammar and understanding the role words really play in sentence meaning (including his little discussion about whether the word 'of' actually has any meaning or merely marks other words that convey meaning). I especially enjoyed the afterward, not just because of the research updates, but because it showed the author himself had grown over the intervening 13 years and acquired a sense of humor about himself.
16 people found this helpful
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- Mr. Anonymous
- 2012-11-25
Interesting but technical book. Sound is flawed.
Steven Pinker is an excellent writer and an all-around smart guy. I always learn a lot when I read anything by Steven Pinker. Having said that, though, I have to admit that parts of this book were somewhat dull (such as the detailed analysis of grammar in chapter 4), and parts were a little hard to follow. I feel like I would need to listen to the book a second time to catch all the parts I missed when my wind wandered. But, overall, I think the book is well worth reading.
The narrator himself is fine, but the recording is poor. The "s" sounds are very harsh and prominent. I think this problem is called "sibilance". I had to turn the treble way down on my car's sound system, and I still cringed whenever a word had an "s" in it.
16 people found this helpful
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- Mark
- 2012-09-12
Good solid stuff
A very interesting and convincing argument to claim that the human ability to use language must have some basis in a genetic, instinctive 'grammar module' in the brain.
9 people found this helpful
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- Amie
- 2013-01-11
Irritating recording distracts from the content
I'm not sure if the fault lay with the recording or the narrator, but in any case the audio is very sibilant. The slurred or hissed S's distract from the content, and sometimes have even caused me to go back and relisten to a word in order to make it out.
Nonetheless, the content is interesting.
12 people found this helpful
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- Michael
- 2012-06-11
Language is truly the gift of the gods.
Would you try another book from Steven Pinker and/or Arthur Morey?
Yes, he certainly puts his case together well and thoroughly.
What was most disappointing about Steven Pinker’s story?
I didn't have the intellectual ability to understand or remember some of his case.
Did the narration match the pace of the story?
Yes, the narration is excellent to present this kind of study.
Did The Language Instinct inspire you to do anything?
Yes, try and beat the idea that I will never speak another language like a native. The argument Steven Pinker puts is solid, but I like the challenge to try.
Any additional comments?
I never realised how language is the key indicator to us humans being top of the pecking order or how we all seem to think what is good language, but what really is a never ending changing, developing and growing form of communication. Steven Pinker takes us from concepts to mouthing words, from grammar to history of languages. From the child to the adult and why apes don't talk. It is a good intellectual book to listen to. I enjoyed the book even though I am not at the level in my thinking to fully understand all that was presented. Nicely phrased though.
12 people found this helpful
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- Paul
- 2012-01-29
Intellectually Stimulating
Any additional comments?
This book was quite a challenge as it got quite technical at times. But I learned a lot about languages and grammar, and how the brain influences each. While I was not convinced that language is an instinct or that there is a grammar gene, there is ample evidence that there is a significant relationship between neuorlogical processes in the brain and grammar and language.
When I read other books now, I look more at structure and how authors express ideas, what makes things clear or confusing, and notice the difference between writing in different periods.
12 people found this helpful
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- damarques
- 2014-03-29
Solid book about the nature of language
If you could sum up The Language Instinct in three words, what would they be?
Darwin wins again.
What did you like best about this story?
Steven Pinker explains very clearly the theory of human language as a biological adaptation. And he teaches you a lot of related subjects along the way.
The way Pinker conveys knowledge to the layperson and the specialist at the same time reminds me of Carl Sagan. Pinker's book is very well written and makes you want to read more and more about the subjects involving human language. In contrast, I was reading one of Terrence Deacon's books about language and got stuck with his tiresome writing.
Which character – as performed by Arthur Morey – was your favorite?
About the narrator, this was the second book I listened with Arthur Morey. Like in "The Better Angels of our Nature" his performance was flawless.
Was this a book you wanted to listen to all in one sitting?
Yes, but it's 19 hours of audio!
Any additional comments?
Excellent book for the lovers of linguistics. And an excellent opportunity for those interested in knowing more about this subject without getting bored.
3 people found this helpful
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- Amazon Customer
- 2012-10-29
Good premise, but reads like a text book
Would you recommend this book to a friend? Why or why not?
I would recommend this book to a linguist, but it's way too verbose for easy reading. For each point he pulls out an arsenal of examples.
What was most disappointing about Steven Pinker’s story?
I think that it could have been half as long and twice as powerful.
11 people found this helpful
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- Kathy
- 2012-05-31
WHoa !!!!!!!!!!
I listened "The Better Angels of our Nature" and LOVED it so naturally I wanted to listen to more of Pinker's books. This one went right over me so fast, my head is still spinning.
Dr. Pinker is a Harvard Professor, an expert in many things, and has a talent for explaining things. This book hit the first two descriptions full blast but as far as explaining things? Well, he talked about so many grammar terms I don't think I've ever heard of let alone understood. This book is sentence diagramming on steroids.
But hey, he's a Harvard Prof and the closest I've ever been to Cambridge MA is a weekend in Boston.
22 people found this helpful