Nonfiction: Do Parents Matter? Robert and Sarah LeVine

Do Parents Matter? Why Japanese Babies Sleep Soundly, Mexican Siblings Don't Fight, and American Families Should Just Relax
Robert A. LeVine and Sarah LeVine
ISBN: 9781610397230
Read September 17, 2016

An interesting cross-cultural study of various parenting practices and the outcomes observed, but flawed and limited in a lot of ways.  Really makes one wish that there were larger groups studying this sort of thing in earnest - I think there would be a great deal of knowledge acquired that way, but it might not be particularly flattering to the current medical/psychological concepts, so there's understandably little push for it.

The authors use personal anthropological/sociological observations and those collected by other groups to make comments about various parenting tactics and supposedly basic concepts, inferring from their observations that there is very little universal about how children are nurtured and raised, and that despite that vast gulf of differences, mainly the adults end up as well-adjusted adults in their respective societies.

I would have liked more citations or deeper explanations, as a lot of things are hand-waved or offhandedly explained without backing: I want to be clear that I don't think they're faking any of their information, or purposefully being misleading, I just wanted to have a clearer understanding of what they're basing that on (which would have made this a much thicker and more scholarly book, so I can completely understand why they chose not to).

Overall interesting, but it raises a lot more questions than it answers.

Dalma Heyn, 1992, ISBN: 0679413391

I'm not listing the title because I do review mainly children's books, but it's easy to find with the info I provided.

Author: Dalma Heyn
ISBN: 0679413391
Turtle Bay/Random House, 1992
Read August 2016

Inspired by professional and cultural literature presenting affairs as being unrelentingly horrible in outcome for married women, Heyn went out and actually talked to some (white, upperclass, privileged) women who DID have affairs, and when their thoughts and reasons clashed horribly with the literature, she took the brave step of abandoning the established "professional" truth, and simply listened and recorded what the women said, and then compared and contrasted that with psychological and sociological studies.

Basically, Heyn showed that if SOCIALLY KNOWN, (even just to the husband) having an affair was most often quite detrimental to women and their security (emotionally, physically, and fiscally) and to their standing in society, if the affair was private, the women in question often felt that this experience provided them a place to be a full, whole person, rather than the "socialized wife" that they all felt they were expected to be inside of marriage.

It was dated, but interesting, and I'd really like to see someone tackle polyamory and plural marriages, because I think some of the interesting dynamics of self-sacrifice and of being less-than a whole authentic self to make a married relationship work, and of course the idea that most men, and some women have that when married they have ownership or controlling rights over the other partner's sexuality.

Interesting read.

2015 Review Round-Up: Nonfiction: Furiously Happy, Jenny Lawson (The Bloggess)

Furiously Happy
Jenny Lawson (The Bloggess)
ISBN: 9781250077004
Lawson's trademark insanity-deprecations; part memoir, part celebration of humanity's weirdness.
Read September 22, 2015

If you ever feel like you're just a little too weird, or perhaps that you are odd in some way that other people just wouldn't quite understand, just pick this up and then come hang out with us on twitter and the blogosphere.  You'll find that the Tribe is overflowing and delighted to welcome you in with questionable taxidermy and oddly specificly morbid Google queries.

Nonfiction: Surprise, Tania Luna & Leeann Renninger

Surprise
Tania Luna and Leeann Renninger
ISBN: 9780399169823
Nonfiction, psychological benefits of being surprised, and how to add surprise to your life.
Read August 2015

Short and simple, Tania and Leeann both were working on different approaches to surprising people (for their own good, of course) and when they learned they were working on the same general idea, they teamed up to work together to create a foundation (and a book) to encourage people to seek out surprise to keep their brains and emotional selves in good working order.

Nonfiction: What Every BODY is Saying, Joe Navarro

What Every BODY is Saying
Joe Navarro
ISBN: 9780061438295
Read January 26, 2015
Ex-FBI-agent and Cuban immigrant teaches how to "read" posture and gestures.

There are several books on body language out there, and lots of them have the same basic info as this one (The Definitive Book of Body Language by Barbara and Allan Pease comes immediately to mind) but this one is different in that Navarro takes the time to get inside the gestures and postures he is describing, and unpacks the psychology and mental gymnastics behind each one.

Super useful, super interesting, and he's quite right that this sort of thing ought to be more commonly known than it is.  At the moment, talented con-men, a few investigative agents, a few more behavioral psychologists, and a whole raft of professional actors know all of these tricks instinctively, or through extended attentive concentrated effort, but the everyday person still thinks that someone who doesn't make eye-contact is lying, or that if someone is nervous during an interview it means that they're guilty.

Much recommended, along with Gavin de Becker's The Gift of Fear).