Being You

May 1, 2021

From world-famous neuroscientist Damasio (it all started with Descartes' Error), Feeling and Knowing relies on recent discoveries in neurobiology, psychology, and AI to explain what consciousness really is (originally scheduled for March 2021). Foster and Frylinck, creators of the documentary phenom My Octopus Teacher--one of Netflix's top 10 films of 2020--swam through South Africa's jaw-droppingly beautiful kelp forests without benefit of wetsuits or oxygen masks (but aided by their favorite octopus) to bring us Underwater Wild, illustrated with over 200 full-color photographs (100,000-copy first printing). A multi-award-winning blogger and founder of Planet Paws, Facebook's most popular pet health page, Habib joins forces with world-renowned veterinarian Becker to explain that dogs suffer from the same chronic illnesses as humans, then introduces a wealth of science-based information ensuring that The Forever Dog in your household will stay alive and well for a long time (150,000-copy first printing). In The Wires of War, Helberg, the former news policy lead at Google, limns the growing cyber conflict piting the West against primarily Russia and China over both software (e.g., news information and social media platforms) and hardware (e.g., cell phones and satellites (100,000-copy first printing). Having grown up in Bangladesh, which she describes as having minimal women's health care, Hossain expected expert maternal care in wealthy America--and nearly died in childbirth; All in Your Head is her impassioned critique of sexism in U.S. health care. Offerman humorously explores the great outdoors as he takes us where The Deer and the Antelope Play. New Yorker staffer Orlean, perhaps best known for The Orchid Thief, here writes On Animals, which explores the animal-human relationship in stories she has written throughout her career. Editor of the New York Times Book Review, Paul offers 100 never-before-published essays (with witty illustrations by Nishant Choksi) to explore 100 Things We've Lost to the Internet, from punctuation and good manners to the ability to entertain ourselves. In The Plant Hunter, enthnobotanist Quave relates her search for plants that can improve or save our lives. Having practiced medicine worldwide, from the Arctic to the Antarctic, Reisman takes us inside The Unseen Body to describe its functions by relating them to the world--the Arctic taught him the value of fat, for instance, while the Himalayas revealed the border between brain and mind (75,000-copy first printing). A prolific author of science titles, including the Pulitzer Prize-winning The Making of the Atomic Bomb, Rhodes profiles Harvard biologist and naturalist O. Wilson--noteworthy for promoting sociobiology and biodiversity--in Scientist. In Being You, the codirector of the Sackler Centre for Consciousness Science at the Universitiy of Sussex, explains that we do not view the world objectively but through a series of constant predictions that are rooted in biological mechanisms we can now measure.

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August 1, 2021
A neurobiological account of consciousness. "Whether you're a scientist or not, consciousness is a mystery that matters." So writes Seth, a neuroscientist at the University of Sussex. "For each of us, our conscious experience is all there is." Some current theories make the mystery all the more mysterious: the notion, for example, that consciousness is a shared hallucination, a thought that would send a Cartesian into fits. What matters, by Seth's account, is that consciousness arises in the "wetware" of our brains, which "are not computers made of meat" but are instead assemblages of electrical and chemical networks that, crucially, are embodied--i.e., contained within a living being. "In my view," writes the author, "consciousness has more to do with being alive than with being intelligent." That said, he depicts the brain as a marvelous thing that we only dimly understand but that has provoked tremendous scientific growth in recent years. In one moving episode, Seth scrubs in for an eight-hour neurological operation that, by exposing the brain to surgical intervention, revealed "the mechanics of a human self." Exploring the nature and content of consciousness, the author finds it intricately linked with self-consciousness. He also emphasizes its biological nature, suggesting that biotechnology, more than the "fleshless calculus" of artificial intelligence, will bring us further advances into what he calls "synthetic consciousness," teaching machines to think in more human terms. As for human consciousness proper, it works by means of perception. We perceive the passage of time, and it passes; we perceive the world, and it exists. These are testable notions, he asserts, that help place us in the world and in time, allowing us to accept the inevitable, when "the controlled hallucination of being you finally breaks down into nothingness." It may not be the most comforting thought, but there are worse. An accessible, unfailingly interesting look inside the workings of the human brain, celebrating its beguiling nature.

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August 23, 2021
Seth (Eye Benders), professor of neuroscience at the University of Sussex, takes on the prodigious task of defining consciousness and explaining its origins in this intense survey. His goal is “to understand how the inner universe of subjective experience relates to, and can be explained in terms of, biological and physical processes unfolding in brains and bodies.” To that end, he breaks down the neuroscience, psychology, and a hefty dose of philosophy, as well as his own research, to conclude that rather than perceiving reality, “we’re all hallucinating all the time. It’s just that when we agree about our hallucinations, that’s what we call reality.” Consciousness is all about human bodies, in an attempt to survive, using their senses to predict how the world is constructed and likely to change; he argues he thus views perception as a creative act. Seth explores consciousness in nonhuman animals (they have it, he writes: “consciousness has more to do with being alive than with being intelligent”) and the probability that it might arise via artificial intelligence, a prospect that he deems unlikely. A slew of terms and theories are introduced that may be difficult to get through for readers without a neuroscience background. But those who stay the course will find much to consider. Agent: PJ Mark, Janklow & Nesbit Assoc.